Feds search home of former DOJ lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn election
Jeffrey Clark, then-assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, speaks during a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 14, 2020. Photo by Susan Walsh/The Associated Press.
Federal agents on Wednesday searched the suburban Virginia home of former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was involved in efforts to help then-President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Clark’s colleague at the Center for Renewing America, an advocacy group where Clark now works, had details of the search on Twitter.
“More than a dozen DOJ law enforcement officials searched Jeff Clark’s house in a predawn raid, put him in the streets in his PJs, and took his electronic devices,” tweeted Russell Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America. “All because Jeff saw fit to investigate voter fraud. This is not America, folks.”
The New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico are among the publications with the story.
Clark told Tucker Carlson of Fox News on Thursday that 12 federal agents and two Fairfax County, Virginia, police officers searched his home for three and a half hours. Law enforcement used an electronics-sniffing dog to help find his electronic devices, all of which were seized, he said.
“This is highly politicized,” Clark told Carlson. “With the hearing that was pointed at me and targeted at me today, … it looks highly coincidental.”
Clark was referring to the hearing on the U.S. Capitol riot being conducted by a House select committee. Testimony indicated that Clark had proposed sending a letter urging Georgia lawmakers to consider a slate of Trump electors, even though now-President Joe Biden had won the state, according to Courthouse News Service.
Trump had considered firing Jeffrey Rosen, then the acting attorney general, and installing Clark in the position with the understanding that Clark would send his Georgia letter to other states, as well. That led to a Jan. 3, 2021, meeting in which senior DOJ officials told Trump that they would resign if Clark got the job.
