Feds search home of Jeffrey Clark, former DOJ official who pushed Trump’s false election fraud claims
CNN
By Evan Perez, CNN Justice Correspondent
Federal investigators on Wednesday conducted a search of the home of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, people briefed on the matter tell CNN.
Clark is the former DOJ lawyer who former President Donald Trump sought to install as attorney general in the days before the January 6 Capitol riot as top officials refused to go along with his vote fraud claims.
He was at the center of an effort by Trump to get the Justice Department to falsely claim there was enough voter fraud in Georgia and other states that he lost, in a last-minute bid to help sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory and pave the way for him to remain in power.
A spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office in Washington confirmed that “there was law enforcement activity in the vicinity” of Clark’s home but declined to comment on any particular person or activity.
Attorneys for Clark didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Center for Renewing America, where Clark works, confirmed the search at Clark’s house, calling it a “weaponization of government.”
“The new era of criminalizing politics is worsening in the US. Yesterday more than a dozen DOJ law enforcement officials searched Jeff Clark’s house in a pre-dawn raid, put him in the streets in his pajamas, and took his electronic devices. All because Jeff saw fit to investigate voter fraud. This is not America, folks,” the group’s president Russ Vought, the former Office of Management and Budget director under Trump, said in a statement. “The weaponization of government must end. Let me be very clear. We stand by Jeff and so must all patriots in this country.”
Clark had met with the House select committee investigating January 6 back in February, but pleaded the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during his nearly two hours-long deposition.
Clark was a Trump-appointed environment law chief at the Justice Department who in December 2020 became the assistant attorney general for the Justice civil division.
In the days before January 6, Clark helped Trump devise a plan to oust then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, place himself atop the department, and have the DOJ intervene in Georgia to set aside its voting results in order to sway the state toward Trump.
During a dramatic January 3, 2021, Oval Office meeting, Rosen, his then-deputy Richard Donoghue and the head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel all threatened to resign in protest, leading Trump to ultimately back away from the plan to install Clark as attorney general.
Rosen, Donoghue and Engel are expected to testify during Thursday’s January 6 committee hearing.
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CNN’s Zachary Cohen, Katelyn Polantz and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
