Did Trump actually appoint Jeffrey Clark to lead the Justice Department? Clark’s lawyer just said yes.
In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Trump believed Clark would harness the department to buttress false claims of voter fraud.
It’s one of the lingering mysteries of the Jan. 6 investigation: Did Donald Trump briefly put Jeffrey Clark — a top ally in his bid to subvert the 2020 election — in charge of the entire Justice Department?
Investigators have long known that Trump considered elevating Clark to the role of attorney general during the chaotic weeks that preceded the attack on the Capitol, as Trump grasped for increasingly desperate ways to remain in office. Clark was a little-known Justice Department official, but Trump believed he would harness the department to buttress false claims of voter fraud. And he was increasingly frustrated with DOJ leaders who had refused to do so.
When top White House and Justice officials threatened a mass resignation at a confrontational Oval Office meeting on Jan. 3, 2021, Trump nixed the radical plan. But it’s never been clear if Trump actually appointed Clark — or at least tried to — before he backed down that day.
On Thursday, Clark’s lawyer Harry MacDougald offered an answer: “There was a period on Jan. 3 when he was the acting attorney general until the president changed his mind later that day.”
The comment by MacDougald — during a disciplinary trial that could result in Clark losing his law license — amplified a little-noticed assertion that Clark’s team made in a pretrial filing. It’s the first time anyone on Clark’s behalf has publicly asserted that Trump did in fact appoint Clark to lead the Justice Department.
Clark, who was seated nearby as MacDougald made the comment, has pointedly declined to discuss the matter publicly, claiming his conversations with Trump are shielded by executive privilege and other protections, particularly while he faces criminal charges alongside Trump in Atlanta related to the episode.
It also dovetails with a piece of evidence unearthed by the Jan. 6 select committee: White House call logs from Jan. 3, 2021 show Trump spoke by phone with Clark four times that day. The first three times, from around 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., the logs identify Clark as “Mr. Jeffrey Clark.” The fourth time, at around 4:17 p.m. — two hours before the fateful Oval Office meeting — they list him as “Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.”
“[C]ontemporaneous White House documents suggest that Clark had already been appointed as the Acting Attorney General,” the report concludes.
(In fact, in a subsequent session of Clark’s disciplinary trial — on Monday, April 1 — MacDougald told the presiding panel that he based his assertion that Clark had been acting attorney general entirely on the select committee’s White House records.)
In documents filed ahead of his disciplinary proceedings, Clark cited the Jan. 6 committee’s finding to indicate that Trump had “designated” him acting attorney general “for a time” on Jan. 3, 2021.
But the matter remains unresolved. Some of Clark’s former colleagues are skeptical that the appointment actually occurred, noting that even if Trump had verbally confirmed it, there would need to be documentation and paperwork to effectuate the leadership change.
“I never heard of any of that until I read it in a media account long after we left Washington,” said Richard Donoghue, one of Clark’s superiors at DOJ during the final weeks of the Trump administration who vehemently opposed Clark’s appointment to lead the department. “I find that claim to be implausible.”
Former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told the Jan. 6 committee that he was prepared to resign if Trump appointed Clark to lead the Justice Department — but that he never believed Trump would make the appointment.
“I didn’t think I would have to follow it through, because I didn’t think he would do it,” Cipollone said in the 2022 interview.
Cipollone’s comments suggested he had not been made aware of any decision to appoint Clark to lead the Justice Department.
Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump in Washington, D.C. with a wide-ranging plot to derail the transfer of power in 2020 and disenfranchise millions of voters. Part of the alleged scheme includes Trump’s plan to sideline the leadership of the Justice Department and replace them with Clark, who was a more willing ally in Trump’s bid to pressure states to reverse his defeat.
Clark is described, though not charged, as one of Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in the effort. He is, however, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the separate criminal case in Georgia involving an alleged racketeering conspiracy to subvert the election in that state.
Prosecutors and congressional investigators say Clark circumvented his superiors at the Justice Department to help Trump pursue flimsy claims of voter fraud, and he later pressured DOJ leaders to send a letter to Georgia and other swing states encouraging them to revisit their election results.
The episode ended in a confrontational Oval Office meeting on Jan. 3, 2021, when Cipollone, Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and several other senior White House and DOJ aides pleaded with Trump to shelve plans to elevate Clark, or else invite mass resignations. After the meeting, Trump backed off of his plan to put Clark in charge of the Justice Department.
MacDougald’s claim that Clark did briefly lead the Justice Department came amid proceedings in Washington, D.C. in which Clark is fighting to save his law license. D.C. bar authorities have charged Clark with using his position to advance false claims about fraud and attempting to coerce DOJ leaders to adopt them. MacDougald made the statement, with Clark sitting nearby, to correct what he characterized as an erroneous statement he had made earlier in the day, when he said that Clark had never been acting attorney general.