Jeff Clark: The Fight of His Life For America's Future
U.S. Assistant Attorney General During Trump Administration Is Now Facing Political Persecution and Lawfare
Note: A version of this piece was published in American Thinker on February 9th.
Jeff Clark is in the fight of his life for America's future.
Clark, U.S. Assistant Attorney General from 2018 to 2021, is a key target – alongside Donald Trump and others – of intense political persecution and lawfare, due to his efforts to uphold election integrity and remedy well-documented election fraud across states like Georgia in the wake of the 2020 election.
Clark, whom the Washington Post acknowledges as a “rising legal star for Republicans,” is being forced to fight two cases and multiple charges at once, revolving around his mere drafting of a letter in December 2020 addressed to state government officials in Georgia regarding the Department of Justice “investigating various irregularities” in the election. The letter, which Clark emailed to acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue for review, was ultimately blocked by the Department of Justice’s chain of command from being sent to Georgia state officials.
Clark met with President Trump in the Oval Office on January 3rd, 2021, as Trump strongly considered appointing Clark as acting attorney general over then-newly appointed acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who had assumed that role following William Barr’s resignation.
For the alleged “crime” of drafting a letter – which was submitted for review and approval within the Department of Justice – that rightfully points out rampant election irregularities and details how to work toward rectifying them, Clark is outrageously being charged with violation of the Georgia RICO Act and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings. At the same time, the District of Columbia Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, in an attempt to disbar Clark, is bringing contrived charges, based on the same drafted letter, of “dishonest” conduct and seeking to “seriously interfere with the administration of justice.”
I spoke with Clark at a Christmas party in Washington, DC this past December, and got a sense of the heavy human toll the ongoing persecution is taking on him, despite the stoic bearing and calm demeanor that he admirably maintains.
I learned that Clark’s father was a Teamster, and that Clark grew up in Philadelphia’s Tacony neighborhood before graduating from Harvard University.
Clark was somber when I asked how the cases were going, but brightened a bit when I observed that he had nailed his Fulton County, Georgia mugshot with a quizzical expression that seemed to speak perfectly to the absurdity of the situation. He said that he had decided beforehand on a “sardonic” look. It was impressive that both Clark and Trump, in their mugshots – which they knew would be widely publicized – met the pressure-filled moment with spot-on expressions as the camera flashed.
Shortly before his and Trump’s mugshots were taken, Clark had spoken at an August 2023 event, which I attended, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Clark's speech began with a prayer for “anyone who is caught up in the dangerous web of lawfare and, really, I think, a revolution designed to take the country down.”
He explained that people like Trump and himself are members of a “protective edge” against the shock-and-awe tactics of Marxists and Democrats, effectively “shielding America and taking on a lot of the attacks that will otherwise instantly pass through to the country.”
During the speech, Clark described the surprise early morning raid of his home in June 2022 by federal agents in “flak gear and all possible militarization.” He was forced into the street in his pajamas, the agents having denied his request to let him put on pants before searching his house. And CNN broadcast footage of Clark being made to stand outside without proper clothing. Clark said, “I’d been at the Justice Department and commanded 1,400 lawyers, but now magically I’m Public Enemy Number One.” He noted that an image of him standing outside his home during the raid – deep in thought about his next legal step – is regularly used by leftists to harass him on social media.
Clark added that, when his youngest daughter (who was traveling with family at the time of the raid) returned home, her first question when no one else was around was: “Dad, do you think the agents have gone for my diary?”
“That struck me,” Clark said, placing his hand over his heart.
Despite the weaponized powers of government leveled at him, Clark has preserved an unshakeable dignity. But the political persecution and lawfare are relentless.
Clark’s D.C. Bar trial is scheduled to begin in March, and he is maintaining executive privilege in the case as instructed by Trump through Trump’s lawyers. He is faced with increasing legal bills, and he notes on the web page of his legal defense donation fund (which has raised around $75,000 at the time of publication) that he is still well below his $500,000 target. He writes that the “lawfare is about trying to stop President Trump from returning to office.”
At Trump National in Bedminster, Clark also explained: “You have to support those who are in leading positions trying to shield the country from the kind of communistic terror that we saw. If you know anything about [Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn, you know he regretted, as he sat in a gulag, ‘If only we had resisted when the police had come. If only we had pushed back on this instead of just quietly going along with it, we wouldn’t have lost our country to the Bolsheviks.’ We have to resist. We have to support those who are being targeted. And we have to pray for the health of our nation.”
Americans should support Clark in any way we are able.