The DOJ Official Who Tried to Steal the Election for Trump Has a Sweet New Gig
In the wake of the 2020 election, Clark latched onto the lie that mass voter fraud had tainted the results, and that Trump was the true victor. He scrambled to throw the Justice Department behind Trump’s machinations to toss out millions of votes and seize an unearned second term. Documents obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform show Clark urging the Justice Department to investigate conspiracy theories about voter fraud in Georgia. (In one email, Clark noted that he was on the phone with a pro-Trump activist who claimed to have filmed proof of voter fraud in Atlanta. The alleged video evidence never materialized.) He also pressured U.S. Attorney BJay Pak to probe these nonsensical allegations, leading Pak to resign abruptly.
Moreover, Clark appears to have been involved in the campaign for the Justice Department to sue Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit would’ve asked the Supreme Court to nullify the election results in each state and award their electors to Trump rather than Biden. It included claims—made infamous by Sidney Powell’s “Kraken” litigation—that Dominion Voting Systems somehow facilitated voter fraud.
When these efforts failed, Clark launched a conspiracy to oust acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who declined to facilitate his various plots. Trump and Clark devised a plan: The president would fire Rosen and elevate Clark as acting attorney general; Clark would then inject the Justice Department into Trump’s mad dash to overturn the election. (Recently released contemporaneous notes confirm that the president considered putting Clark in charge of the entire agency.) This coup only failed when DOJ officials threatened to resign en masse upon Rosen’s termination.
Despite the extreme and dangerous nature of these antics, Clark has not been exiled from the conservative legal movement. Clark’s new employer, the NCLA, was founded in 2017 by Philip Hamburger, a legal scholar who believes that much of the administrative state—the hundreds of agencies that enforce federal regulations—is unlawful. It is largely funded by the Charles G. Koch Foundation. routinely sues the government. In recent months, the NCLA has fought to overturn the federal ban on bump stocks, shield the Federalist from an unfair labor practice after its publisher threatened any employee who tried to unionize, and topple the federal government’s COVID eviction moratorium. On Tuesday, the organization filed suit on behalf an Antonin Scalia Law School professor who refuses to get vaccinated against COVID, arguing that the school’s vaccine mandate is illegal.
