pleading the fifth. now the question is did you participate in these illegal activities in the white house as you know, he recommended a process by which the elections could be manipulated in certain states. mr. clark last night indicated that he intends to invoke the fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination. apparently because he believes testimony about his interactions with president trump would tend to incriminate him and r, thus, may subject him to criminal prosecution. when the chairman of the committee, betty thompson, and the vice chair of the committee made those comments this week about why it is that jeff clark is pleading the fifth, a couple of things stuck out a bit that i didn tt quite understand when they first made those comments. chairman thompson saying, did you participate in those illegal
should be more urgently criminally investigating what jeffrey clark was up to and who was with him in what he was up to? i want to be careful about my answer to your question. i will say generally that i think that the justice department ought to be investigating, for example, as i have said, the former president s actions in trying to overturn the election in georgia. any effort to overturn a lawful election as we have witnessed with donald trump ought to be investigated. i don t want to talk more specifically about mr. clark, but i will say, according to his lawyer at the 11th hour, he s making the assertion he did not make whener he appeared before r committee only weeks ago, that he believes his answers at least to some questions might incriminate him. now the questions most pertinent
finding him in content and holding in abeyance the fact they will a refer him for crimil contempt prosecution. they can make a referral to the justice department to prosecute him for contempt if they wanted to. they did that for steve bannon. they have not yet done that with him. that will be t resolved shortly. here s the thing, though. as part of the process of holding jeffrey clark in contempt thisre week, again the committee did hold him in contempt. the referral to the justice department is another matter that remains to be scene. as part of the process of holding him in contempt, which is am formal process, the januy 6thpr investigation this week publically released all their doings thus far with the jeff clark, their letters to him and from him, their communications with his counsel. they also released the transcript of what happened when jeff clark actually showed up for his deposition. i mean, trump adviser steve bannon didn t even show up for
storm out in the middle of it. a the transcript was released this week, including this fascinating record of everything theyin said in the room after jf clark and his lawyer left, after they publically released that document this week, jeff clark surprised everyone by telling theer committee, surprise, actually upon reflection, i m pleading the fifth. he told them he s going to invoke his fifth amendment rights. surprise? what led him to do that? well, the chair and the vice chair have gone on the record publically, once on this show, once in the committee hearing room to say why it appears that jeff clark is now taking the fifth. obviously, he is aware that something went on that s illegal, and rather than be responsible and answer it, he s
with his lawyer, but at that deposition, after he walked out one of the committee lawyers revealed this letter clark had drafted for the justice department to send to georgia state officials, the letter advising them to flip their election results, this letter contained metadata suggesting it came from the white house, specifically an office called the white house communications agency. we don t know exactly what that means. we ve confirmed with a source close to the committee that indeed metadata from that letter suggests that the letter was authored by the white house communications agency. now jeffrey clark has decided as of this evening he is not only going to plead the fifth the next time he appears before the committee, but his next appearance before the committee will not be tomorrow as was previously scheduled. he now says he has a medical issue that precludes his attendance. joining us now is california congresswoman and member of the january 6th investigation, zoe lofgren, co