A "policy dispute"

Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who worked closely with former President Donald Trump in a bid to subvert the 2020 election, should face professional consequences — including the potential loss of his license to practice law — for his effort to throw the nation into chaos, D.C. bar disciplinary authorities argued Tuesday.

But a lawyer for Clark said it would be unreasonable to punish him for his work during the tumultuous days ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, when he spearheaded a proposal to encourage state legislatures to consider overturning the results. That plan was never adopted and Trump ultimately turned it down. Punishing Clark for being on the losing side of a policy dispute would set a dangerous precedent, Clark’s team argued.

  Politico

A policy dispute? A policy dispute? Brainstorming ways to commit felony overturning of the government amounts to policy disputes?

Investigators charged Clark with violating professional rules of conduct in late 2020 by attempting to coerce his bosses to send a letter to Georgia lawmakers encouraging them to reconsider the outcome of the election there based on “significant concerns” about the integrity of the vote.

[...]

Clark held unauthorized talks with Trump, violating DOJ policies against White House contacts, and then sought to outflank then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue, by telling them he planned to accept an offer from Trump to take over the department unless they agreed to send his proposed letter to Georgia.

[...]

Clark has spent two years fighting legal battles intended to scrap the case altogether, contending that the D.C. Bar has no jurisdiction over the conduct of federal government lawyers. But a federal court rejected Clark’s position, and an appeals court declined to step in to block the case from moving ahead.

[...]

Clark’s efforts were intended to remain confidential — and the letter he drafted, which was never sent to Georgia, was supposed to remain secret, protected by various forms of executive and law enforcement privilege, until a leak to the press exposed the fraught discussions.

[...]

Trump ultimately backed down from his plans to elevate Clark amid a mass resignation threat by top DOJ and White House officials. Clark has been criminally charged by Georgia prosecutors for his role in Trump’s effort to reverse the outcome of the election, and he was identified as a co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s Washington, D.C. case against Trump.

[...]

John Eastman, one of the architects of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, is expected to face a disbarment ruling by Wednesday, when a California judge issues her proposed punishment for alleged violations of professional conduct.

At least somebody is taking this shit seriously and attempting to hold someone to account for the attempted coup.

Clark is unlikely to testify in the proceeding. His lawyers have indicated he is likely to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to the stand.

I think that would be wise. 

Does this not look like a half-baked shyster "straight out of central casting?" 

UPDATE 05:55 pm:

It was just a few days until Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress was slated to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, and Trump had suddenly resuscitated a plan to replace the leadership of the Justice Department with Jeffrey Clark, a little known DOJ official who Trump expected to mount a sweeping nationwide effort to help him remain in power.

So [Trump’s deputy White House counsel, Pat] Philbin called Clark, a colleague from their days in private practice dating back to the 1990s and tried to talk him out of it.

“I tried to explain to him that it was a bad idea for multiple reasons,” Philbin recalled Tuesday at a long-delayed disbarment hearing for Clark. “He would be starting down a path of assured failure … If by some miracle somehow, it worked, there’d be riots in every major city in the country and it was not an outcome the country would accept.”

  Politico

I expect he wishes he'd heeded Philbin's advice.

Philbin, who testified for about two hours on Tuesday, described Clark as wildly misinformed about claims of election fraud — countenancing a theory about “smart thermostats” being used to manipulate voting machines — and not sufficiently cognizant of the havoc it would wreak on the country if his plan succeeded. But he said Clark seemed “100 percent sincere” in his beliefs.

“I believe that he felt that he essentially had a duty,” Philbin said. “I think Jeff’s view was that there was a real crisis in the country and that he was being given an opportunity to do something about it.”

Well then Jeff shouldn't have been anywhere near the reins of power if he was deep into QAnon territory. Plenty of people are serving jail time right now for sincerely believing they were given an opportunity to do something about it on January 6.

“I don’t think I said anything on the phone. I just thought that that showed a lack of judgment,” he said. “Triggering riots in every major city in America, you’ve got to be really sure about what you’re doing and have no alternatives … In my estimation, that was not the sort of situation we were talking about.”

Exactly.

“We talked about some of the theories of fraud that were around. They’d been debunked and there wasn’t really any there-there,” Philbin said.

And yet, Clark still believed? I doubt it. He saw fame and glory and a top appointment in his future.

 

UPDATE 04/17/2026:  The wheels of justice grind slowly.

Closer and closer

The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to force the top two lawyers from Donald Trump’s White House counsel’s office to testify about their conversations with the former President

[...]

Trump and his allies have used claims of confidentiality – both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege - with mixed results in multiple legal quagmires that surround the former President. Those include the January 6 federal criminal investigation, the Mar-a-Lago documents federal criminal investigation, Georgia’s Fulton County investigation of election meddling, and the House select committee probe of January 6 as well. Some of the privilege arguments Trump has raised have never been settled in federal court, and some of the fights could lead to the Supreme Court.

[...]

The move to compel additional testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin just last week is part of a set of secret court proceedings. Trump has been fighting to keep former advisers from testifying before a criminal grand jury about certain conversations, citing executive and attorney-client privileges to keep information confidential or slow down criminal investigators.

But the Justice Department successfully secured answers from top vice presidential advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short over the past three weeks in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

[...]

[T]he Justice Department won a trial-level judge’s order at the end of September that said Jacob and Short must testify in response to certain questions over which Trump’s team had tried to claim presidential and attorney-client confidentiality.

[...]

Cipollone’s and Philbin’s roles as White House lawyers raise complicated legal questions about whether Trump can claim confidentiality over the legal advice they gave him, as well as whether a former president can assert executive privilege to hold off criminal investigators.

[...]

All four men have been willing to be as cooperative as the law demands, leaving Trump’s team to handle the fight over certain details in the investigation

[...]

The sealed court case, stemming from the grand jury’s work, had been before the chief judge of the DC District Court, Beryl Howell. Howell refused to put on hold Jacob and Short’s testimony while Trump’s team appealed.

[...]

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is still considering legal arguments from Trump’s defense lawyers and the Justice Department over his ability to make executive and attorney-client privilege claims.

  CNN

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Any question left that Trump knew (and intended) he was taking documents he shouldn't have?

He lied about what he had.

Months before National Archives officials retrieved hundreds of classified documents in 15 boxes from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, they were told that none of the material was sensitive or classified and that Trump had only 12 boxes of “news clippings,” according to people familiar with the conversations between Trump’s team and the Archives.

During a September 2021 phone call with top Archives lawyer Gary Stern, former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin offered reassuring news: Philbin said he had talked to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who made the assertion about the dozen boxes of clippings, the people familiar with the call said. Trump’s team was aware of no other materials, Philbin said, relaying information he said he got from Meadows.

  MSN

And, gee, where would Meadows get his information? Or should I say instructions?

Stern had sought the call because he believed there were still more than two dozen boxes of materials that Trump had, and he also had concerns about whether digital records had been properly retained, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Top Archives officials continued to believe there was more material than they were being told about.

I guess they knew Trump.

Ultimately, many more than 40 boxes were found at Mar-a-Lago containing documents with classified markings and presidential records.

[...]

While he was at Mar-a-Lago last summer, Meadows talked with Trump about the documents that the Archives was seeking to have returned, sources said. Meadows continued to work with the Archives in its efforts to recover documents since then, according to the sources.

“Mr. Meadows did not personally review the boxes at Mar A Lago and did not have a role in examining or verifying what was or wasn’t contained within them,” Meadows’ spokesperson Ben Williamson told CNN.

  CNN

I have no doubt he was simply repeating what Trump told him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump CoS also had docs he shouldn't have

In recent weeks, Meadows' lawyers arranged to turn over materials to the Archives that [Mark] Meadows had already shared with Congress for the January 6 select committee investigation. Meadows agreed to provide the material to the Archives, though his legal team maintained that it believes it was not subject to the Presidential Records Act.

[...]

The Archives had become aware earlier this year it did not have everything from Meadows after seeing what he had turned over to the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021. Details of Meadows' submissions to the Archives and the engagement between the two sides have not been previously reported.

"It could be a coincidence, but within a week of the August 8 search on Mar-a-Lago, much more started coming in," one source familiar with the discussions said.

  CNN

Coincidence, I'm sure.

The records Meadows turned over to the Archives were not classified, and the situation is markedly different from the Archives' efforts to retrieve federal records from Trump and its referral to the Justice Department earlier this year when classified materials were discovered among documents the agency retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.

The source familiar with the discussions said that the Archives considered Meadows to be cooperating, even though the process started slowly.

He just needed a little prodding.

Another person familiar with the matter said the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago had nothing to do with Meadows' decision to turn over the materials to the Archives, as it was a separate discussion.

Sure. Sure. We understand.

Meadows also has been engaged in efforts to get Trump to return documents to the National Archives since last year, sources tell CNN. Meadows is one of Trump's designees to the Archives, and he got involved in the summer of 2021 after being contacted by another designee, former Trump Deputy White House Counsel Pat Philbin.

[...]

Meadows' engagement with the Archives and his discussions with Trump underscore the lengthy efforts the Archives embarked on to retrieve federal records from Trump that led to last month's unprecedented FBI search of the former President's residence.

[...]

A source close to Trump said that while the former President has not completely cut ties with Meadows, Trump has complained about Meadows in conversations with other allies.

Did anyone imagine he hasn't? Meadows knows where some bodies are buried, and he's going to be singing. Unlike Weisselberg, Meadows won't be going to jail for Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How to abscond with classified documents and not be arrested

Four days before the end of the Trump presidency, a White House aide peered into the Oval Office and was startled, if not exactly surprised, to see all of the president’s personal photos still arrayed behind the Resolute Desk as if nothing had changed — guaranteeing the final hours would be a frantic dash mirroring the prior four years.

[...]

Papers he had accumulated in his last several months in office had been dropped into boxes, roughly two dozen of them, and not sent to the National Archives. Aides had even retrieved letters from Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, and given them to Mr. Trump in the final weeks.

[...]

Although the White House Counsel’s Office had told Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s last chief of staff, that the roughly two dozen boxes worth of material in the residence needed to be turned over to the archives, at least some of those boxes, including those with the Kim letters and some documents marked highly classified, were shipped to Florida. There they were stored at various points over the past 19 months in different locations inside Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s members-only club, home and office.

[...]

This month, prosecutors obtained a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago for remaining materials, including some related to sensitive national security matters. The investigation is active and expanding, according to recent court filings, as prosecutors look into potentially serious violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.

  NYT

And we don't know which instances of obstruction, beyond attempting to get back the documents Trump should not have in his possession, they're expecting to have evidence for.

Mr. Meadows assured aides that the harried packing up of the White House would follow requirements about the preservation of documents, and he said he would make efforts to ensure that the administration complied with the Presidential Records Act, according to people familiar with those conversations.

But as the clock ticked down, Mr. Trump focused on pushing through last-minute pardons and largely ignored the transition he had tried to forestall.

[...]

From his first hours in office, Mr. Trump had always taken a proprietary view of the presidency, describing government documents and other property — even his staff — as his own personal possessions.

[...]

[In reality, under] the Presidential Records Act, the law that strictly governs the handling of records generated in the Oval Office, every document belonged to taxpayers. Whether the materials were national security briefings, reams of unclassified documents automatically uploaded to a secure server in Pennsylvania or notes that Mr. Trump routinely ripped up or flushed down the toilet — all were government property to be assessed and, in most cases, transferred as part of the nation’s history to the National Archives.

[...]

Mr. Trump’s lawyers and aides were well versed in the records act, even if Mr. Trump routinely flouted it. Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump’s first White House counsel, instituted a protocol for the proper handling of materials and gave presentations on the law to staff members, former officials said. After the 2020 election, White House officials held conversations about the fact that someone needed to retrieve documents that Mr. Trump had accumulated in the residence over many months.

[...]

By the end of the administration, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and his deputy, Patrick F. Philbin, were keenly aware that Mr. Trump’s handling of documents was a potential problem.

[...]

Mr. Meadows’s immediate predecessors in that role — President Barack Obama’s last chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and President George W. Bush’s final chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten — had created teams to scrub West Wing offices of anything that belonged to the archives and made the stewardship of government records a priority. It is unclear whether Mr. Meadows took the same measures, former aides said. But in the administration’s final weeks, the White House emailed all of its offices detailed instructions about returning documents and cleaning out their spaces.

[...]

Mr. Meadows also assured White House staff members that he would talk

[...]

[B]y early 2021, after Mr. Trump had left the White House, officials with the archives realized they were missing significant material.

They reached out to, among others, Scott Gast, who had been a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office under Mr. Trump, and Mr. Philbin. The two men, along with Mr. Meadows and four other Trump officials, had been appointed by Mr. Trump on his last full day in office to work with the National Archives.

[...]

The archivists were particularly insistent about getting back the missing correspondence from the North Korean leader and a letter left on the Resolute Desk for Mr. Trump by Mr. Obama, both of significant historical value.

Archives officials also asked Mr. Gast and Mr. Philbin about the roughly two dozen boxes that had been in the residence during the Trump administration’s final days. Mr. Philbin responded that he would work to get them in the hands of the archives and reached out to Mr. Meadows, who said he would help make it happen.

[...]

But archives officials did not get what they wanted until they traveled to Mar-a-Lago and retrieved 15 boxes of material in January 2022. Subsequently, archives officials told Mr. Trump’s team that they had identified social media records that had not been preserved, and that they had learned White House staff members had not preserved official business they had conducted on their personal electronic messaging accounts.

[...]

In the spring, both Mr. Philbin and Mr. Gast were questioned by the F.B.I. about the boxes; Mr. Cipollone was also interviewed at some point. A grand jury was formed.

[...]

In June, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers signed a statement asserting that all relevant documents with classified markings from the boxes that had been requested — by then they were stored in a basement area at Mar-a-Lago — had been returned. The Justice Department would later file a detailed affidavit to a federal judge in Florida, revealing that the department believed possible crimes had been committed, precipitating the search on Aug. 8 at the club.

[...]

None of [the] documents or any other materials pertaining to the Russia investigation were believed to be in the cache of documents recovered by the F.B.I. during the search of Mar-a-Lago.

Somebody's ass - or somebodies' asses - will soon be in a sling.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Collins' question

“If President Trump had more than one motive for his alleged conduct — such as the pursuit of personal political advantage, rooting out corruption and the promotion of national interest — how should the Senate consider more than one motive in its assessment of Article 1?”

[...]

She said she was asking the question on behalf of herself as well as Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, two other Republican lawmakers viewed as key swing votes in the Senate trial.

[...]

“If there is something that shows a possible public interest and the president could have that possible public-interest motive, that destroys their case. Once you’re into mixed-motive land, it’s clear that their case fails,” Philbin said.

  Marketwatch

What a bunch of unmitigated bullshit. How about if I rob a bank, and one of my motives is to get rich and the other is to donate something to feeding starving children? Can I go free?

This is an out for any Republican senator to offer his constituents for an acquittal vote.

If it’s really true that a mixed motive can’t be the basis for removal, then the senators need only conclude that Trump had, somewhere in his mind, some public interest, perhaps ferreting out corruption generally or forcing other countries to share in the costs of NATO, to justify a vote for acquittal.

[...]

Indeed, at one point, Philbin argued that it would be enough if the president might have had such a motive to clear the way for acquittal.

It requires only brief reflection to see that the position is akin to insulating from any constitutional remedy the most vile and abusive presidential conduct. For it will routinely be the case that a president, even in the middle of some desperate or foolish act of law breaking, might also have some more benign motive somewhere in mind.

This kind of squishy thinking would not fly in a real court.

[...]

If Republican senators are persuaded by the mixed-motive argument and use it as a basis for voting against witnesses, they will have been hoodwinked, and perhaps willingly.

    WaPo

Not perhaps.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's defense

As expected, the plan is to lie.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: