It’s safe to say that most of us have never heard of Jeffrey Clark, who served at the Justice Department during the Trump administration, but it seems that Clark was the one DOJ official intent on helping the failed, one-term former president successfully overturn the results of the 2020 election by pressuring states to alter their ballot totals.
CNN reports that Clark — who worked at Justice as head of environmental law — used “backchannel efforts” between the White House and Trump’s allies who were also involved in trying to change the results of the election.
Clark had an especially bizarre theory to explain why Trump had lost to Joe Biden in states such as Arizona and Georgia:
“By late December, as Trump and his allies pushed conspiracies about alleged irregularities that he claimed stole the election from him, Clark told senior Justice officials that he knew of sensitive information that indicated Chinese intelligence used special kinds of thermometers to change results in machines tallying votes, people briefed on the matter said. The Justice Department by then had made clear it found no evidence of vote-changing in the election.”
However, when then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe briefed members of the DOJ (including Clark), it soon became clear that U.S. intelligence agencies had absolutely no proof of any “Chinese thermometers” as Clark had alleged:
“At Rosen’s request, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe provided the briefing, which drew on classified findings not yet public that showed there was no evidence that foreign interference had affected vote tallies. Rosen and other officials had acceded to his request for a classified briefing out of belief it could put a stop to his unfounded claims of election fraud, according to some of the sources.
“Clark wasn’t swayed by what he heard from Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist who had stirred controversy with comments seeking to support Trump’s pre-election foreign interference claims that China and Iran were working to elect Joe Biden just as Russia was trying to support Trump.”
Clark will probably be called to testify before congressional committees investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, but it remains unclear if he will obey a subpoena and also if Trump will claim executive privilege to keep Clark from giving testimony. That alone suggests that Clark may have played a major role and has information that would directly implicate Trump or then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, both of whom are believed to have possibly broken federal law with their actions to help Trump remain in office.
Whether or not Clark does testify, he should be investigated fully by the current DOJ under Attorney General Merrick Garland and if he broke any laws, he should be charged and prosecuted for his crimes. The same holds true for Trump, Meadows, and anyone else who tried to carry out a coup that would have given Trump a stolen second term in office.