— Washington Federal agents searched the home of former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark in June as part of a criminal investigation into possible violations of laws pertaining to false statements, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice, according to a filing released Wednesday by a District of Columbia Bar committee.
Clark told legal authorities that on the morning of June 20, approximately a dozen agents with the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General executed a search warrant at his Virginia home and seized his electronic devices “in connection with an investigation of violations” of three federal statutes, according to the partially redacted filing. CNN reported the filing first.
Clark has requested that his disciplinary case before the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility be put on hold pending multiple investigations, including those by the Justice Department, the House select committee investigating the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and a Fulton County, Georgia, special grand jury.
However, the agency in charge of attorney disciplinary matters, which opposes delaying the proceedings, stated in the filing that Clark “has not alleged that he is the subject of a grand jury investigation, much less that he has been indicted.”
The committee of the board of professional responsibility recommended denial of Clark’s request to defer his disciplinary proceedings.
This summer, the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel initiated disciplinary proceedings against Clark, citing his attempts to promote former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. In a 13-page filing detailing the ethics allegations against Clark, legal regulators cited a letter the former Justice Department lawyer pushed to send to Georgia officials falsely claiming the department had identified “significant concerns” that may have influenced the outcome of the election in multiple states, including Georgia.
Clark allegedly “attempted to engage in behavior involving dishonesty” and “attempted to engage in conduct that would substantially interfere with the administration of justice” by mailing the letter containing false assertions, according to D.C. disciplinary officials.
In response to the charges, Clark’s counsel argued that the D.C. Bar lacks jurisdiction over his conduct because its intervention “would interfere with the president’s unique and unreviewable authority over federal criminal and civil investigations occurring during his term in office.”
They wrote that the accusations “do not allege (or significantly allege) that [Clark] intended to conduct dishonestly for self-gain or to achieve an illegal aim for former President Trump.”
June’s select committee meeting centered on Clark’s activities surrounding the 2020 presidential election and efforts to encourage the Justice Department to contest the results.
Trump intended to dismiss the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, in December 2021 and replace him with Clark, an environmental lawyer, which committee chair Bennie Thompson described as a “political coup.”
Top Justice Department officials vowed to leave if Trump appointed Clark as department head, and the former president finally decided not to do so.