Jeffrey Clark told DC Bar that DOJ search of his home linked to false statements, conspiracy, obstruction investigation
By Tierney Sneed and Katelyn Polantz, CNN
The Justice Department is investigating felony violations of false statements, conspiracy and obstruction as part of its January 6, 2021, probe that led to a recent search of former Trump administration official Jeffrey Clark’s home, according to an account of the criminal investigation made public Wednesday in a separate proceeding.
Clark’s legal team wrote that on June 20 “approximately a dozen armed agents of the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General executed a criminal search warrant at [Mr. Clark’s] home at around 7 a.m. and seized his electronic devices” as part of an investigation into violations of laws concerning false statements, conspiracy and obstruction, according to a report published Wednesday by a committee of the DC Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility.
This is the first time a document has named the specifics of what the Justice Department is considering as possible crimes, as it looks at the top circle of political players around then-President Donald Trump before January 6.
Separate from the criminal investigation — in which Clark has not been charged — the DC Bar’s disciplinary counsel brought an ethics complaint against Clark for the role he played in seeking to use his department to promote Trump’s bogus election fraud claims at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021.
The attorney discipline committee’s report released Wednesday quoted an assertion Clark made in a still-confidential filing where he discloses the details of the search of his home. He had argued to the ethics authorities that his proceedings there should be on hold while the DOJ and other authorities investigate him.
The Justice Department declined to comment to CNN.
Clark’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s requests Wednesday for more information about what they know.
His lawyers have said electronics were taken at the time of the June search of his Virginia home — and kept by investigators over the summer. Only some of those seized devices have been returned to him, on September 1, his lawyers wrote to the ethics committee earlier this month.
Clark has denied the accusations that he violated attorney ethics rules, writing in a September 8 answer to the charges that he hadn’t “harbored any scienter to act in a dishonest fashion for self gain or to achieve an illicit objective for former President Trump.”
Trump toyed with the idea of firing the Justice Department’s top leadership and installing Clark, after Clark tried to push the department toward questioning the former President’s election loss.
The disclosure comes as the broader federal investigation into events surrounding the aftermath of the 2020 election has escalated.
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