Former Justice department official Jeffrey Clark doesn't seem to understand who he was supposed to be working for when he was still at the DOJ. As Raw Story reported, Clark repeatedly cited attorney-client privilege when refusing to answer questions at a disciplinary hearing before the D.C. Bar.
"Mr. Clark, you asserted a number of times attorney-client privilege," Matthews said. "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.
At that point, Clark's attorney, Harry MacDougald, urged his client to use his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
"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," MacDougald said. "So respectfully, I would ask him to invoke."
Matthews asked the question again, and Clark followed his attorney's advice.
"So I would respond to that by invoking the same grouping of privileges, with all due respect: the Fifth Amendment at this time, the executive privilege, the law enforcement privilege, the deliberative process privilege, and the attorney-client privilege," Clark said.
Which, as they noted, was met with this response form Marcy Wheeler on Xitter:
And this one from Ryan Reilly.
Here's more on the hearing from NBC:
An environmental lawyer whom Donald Trump wanted to take over the Justice Department in the days before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a disbarment hearing Wednesday.
Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department civil lawyer with no criminal law experience, had wanted to investigate a conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen, including via smart thermostats. Just hours before the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump nearly made Clark the acting attorney general but backed off when Justice Department leadership threatened to resign en masse.
Federal authorities searched Clark's home in June 2022, and he now faces criminal charges in Georgia in the state racketeering case against Trump and others. Clark surrendered to authorities in that case in August and pleaded not guilty. He is also unindicted co-conspirator No. 4 in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith against Trump.
Clark briefly testified during a disciplinary hearing unfolding this week before the Ad Hoc Hearing Committee for the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, which is deciding whether he should lose his bar license for his involvement in attempts to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss. The case was initiated in 2022 by the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel and has been held up in litigation for nearly two years.
"Only the best people." This news in the same week we find out that a California court just ruled that John Eastman should be disbarred.