If you’re wondering what’s become of Jeffrey Clark after he tried to help ex-president Donald Trump overturn an election he lost, Clark is currently facing a disciplinary proceeding and in that process, witnesses are testifying to some very disturbing events, including his belief that ‘smart thermostats’ were used to manipulate voting machines.
In the days before the deadly terrorist attack of January 6th, 2021, Trump hatched the plot to replace Justice Department leadership with Jeffrey Clark. Clark was willing, where
Jeffrey Clark, a Trump senior official in DOJ, is facing a disciplinary proceeding that could result in the loss of his license to practice law. He stands accused of “making false claims as he attempted to enlist the agency in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo his 2020 election loss.”
“What Mr. Clark was attempting to do was essentially a coup at the Department of Justice,” the District of Columbia Bar disciplinary counsel said opening arguments on Tuesday.
Here a coup, there a coup, everywhere a coup, coup.
Clark’s lawyer denies that Clark was engaged in an attempted coup at the DOJ, saying he was instead engaged in an “internal debate and disagreement.”
Clark is the person Trump tried to put in charge of the DOJ as “acting” head, a trick he often used to get around the norms that serve as some kind of checks and balances, to take action on Trump’s false claims about the election he lost. Clark is accused of trying to pressure DOJ leaders to act on false claims of election fraud in an effort to help Trump overturn election results in various states.
To this end, Donald Trump’s former deputy White House counsel, Pat Philbin, gave his first public testimony about what went down at the DOJ as Trump was trying to seize power and overturn U.S. democracy, during which he testified that Clark was “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.”
Philbin describes, in Politico, Clark as a true believer who thought he had the opportunity “to do something about it.”
Philbin “warned Clark that there would be riots in every major American city if Trump reversed the outcome of the election,” to which Clark responded, “Well, Pat, that’s what the Insurrection Act is for.”
Clark wanted to deploy U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops in the borders of the U.S. to suppress any civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion that might arise from Donald Trump refusal to honor the will of the people in an election he lost.
The takeaway from this testimony is more than just where did Trump find so many people so willing to throw away their own careers for clearly bonkers Q-Anon level conspiracy theories, but more important at this moment: Trump and his helpers at Project 2025 are plotting how to not be stopped next time.
Trump and his enablers thought nothing of the idea of deploying the U.S. military against U.S. citizens in an effort to stay in power. This is the thinking of a dictator, not of a president of a democratic country.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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