Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark made a major slip-up on Wednesday, admitting during a disciplinary hearing to save his law license that he had one client in mind while dodging questions on the basis of attorney-client privilege: former President Donald Trump.
“Mr. Clark, you asserted a number of times attorney-client privilege,” prompted a committeewoman for the D.C. bar, Patricia Matthews. “For whom were you the attorney?”
“For President Trump, the head of the executive branch, the sole head, the unitary head of Article Two, the executive branch of the United States government,” Clark replied.
That was, however, more than Clark’s attorney expected him to share, thereafter urging his client to plead the Fifth in an attempt to avoid incriminating himself further.
“I would respectfully request my client to invoke questions about the basis for attorney-client privilege because those answers would be intimidating to them as well,” said Harry MacDougald, Clark’s attorney. “So respectfully, I would ask him to invoke.”
But the singular defense only made Clark more combative as the hearing went on. At one point, he accused the hearing’s lead investigator, Hamilton Fox, of attempting to humiliate him, reported Politico.
Clark stands accused of attempting to engage in dishonest conduct on behalf of Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. That included Clark’s suggestion to send a letter to Georgia officials, underlining a DOJ investigation into the voting process in the state and suggesting that they should void President Joe Biden’s win. Clark also held multiple meetings with Trump that violated proper DOJ procedure, actions that the lead investigator described on Tuesday as “essentially a coup attempt at the Department of Justice.”
Clark is charged alongside Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and more than a dozen others in an alleged racketeering conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. He has also been identified—but not charged—by federal prosecutors in Trump’s D.C. trial as part of a larger scheme to help Trump retain power.
