New emails emerge of oval office confrontation three days before Jan. 6

[cilla4progress]

Source: Washington Post

Three days before Congress was slated to certify the 2020 presidential election, a little-known Justice Department official named Jeffrey Clark rushed to meet President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a last-ditch attempt to reverse the results.

Clark, an environmental lawyer by trade, had outlined a plan in a letter he wanted to send to the leaders of key states Joe Biden won. It said that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote and that the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump” for Congress to approve.

In fact, Clark’s bosses had warned there was not evidence to overturn the election and had rejected his letter days earlier. Now they learned Clark was about to meet with Trump. Acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen tracked down his deputy, Richard Donoghue, who had been walking on the Mall in muddy jeans and an Army T-shirt. There was no time to change. They raced to the Oval Office.

As Rosen and Donoghue listened, Clark told Trump that he would send the letter if the president named him attorney general.

Read more: https://wapo.st/3zECT6M

---

(Gifted - no paywall)

Just wow...

[liberalla]

1. WOW is right!

Damn! At work now- will finish later. Thanks!

[Grokenstein]

2. That's quite the read.

Donoghue urged Trump not to put Clark in charge, calling him “not competent” and warning of “mass resignations” by Justice Department officials if he became the nation’s top law enforcement official, according to Donoghue’s account.

“What happens if, within 48 hours, we have hundreds of resignations from your Justice Department because of your actions?” Donoghue said he asked Trump. “What does that say about your leadership?”

Donoghue probably meant well but didn't realize "hundreds of resignations" is precisely the sort of deliberately-sown chaos that gives dim donnie (and his Russian owner) turgid toadstools. Although dim donnie probably resented some underling trying to extort him when it's supposed to be the other way around. /s

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. I think Donpghue played it right with the threatened resignations

Trump is a pig headed pig but he actually isn't literally stupid on a feral level. He knew that it would not end well for him if he triggered off a mass exodus from the DOJ. He still had hopes of remaining President, but that would have required a number of State legislatures and a majority of State delegations to Congress to back his coup by rejecting Biden Electoral College delegates and replacing them with newly minted Trump delegates. The uproar that mass resignations from DOJ would have caused would have made Nixon's Saturday Night massacre seem like a total non event in comparison. I think that would have triggered off some defections from enough old line Republican Congress members to doom that scheme, which had very little margin for error at best. I figure at that point Trump thought he had a better chance of holding onto power via his mob stopping Biden's certification followed by his use of the Insurrection Act.

[wiggs]

18. Yes. Plus a Saturday massacre leading to mass resignations wouldn't play into

the grievance/victimhood theme that makes the grifting more profitable

[LiberalLovinLug]

33. If...... our nightmares come true and the Orange Emperor rises again in 2024

And riding on his new fresh mandate, he will have learned from this. And next time he’ll see he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by installing True Believers in every position, no matter who resigns. In fact that will only create more positions to fill with even more sycophants.

[2naSalit]

38. That's it!

"...he actually isn't literally stupid on a feral level."

[CrispyQ]

34. I think Donoghue played Trump perfectly.

“You should understand that your entire department leadership will resign. Every [assistant attorney general] will resign. ... Mr. President, these aren’t bureaucratic leftovers from another administration. You picked them. This is your leadership team. You sent every one of them to the Senate; you got them confirmed. What is that going to say about you, when we all walk out at the same time?”

Donoghue then told Trump that Clark had no qualification to be attorney general: “He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. He’s never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury.”

[PatSeg]

3. Whoa

It sounds like a movie, a really BAD movie.

[Grokenstein]

5. No worries--someday, regardless of the outcome, it will be.

[ms liberty]

19. I hope I the movie has a happy ending.

[PatSeg]

29. Same here

[PatSeg]

28. Yes, eventually

So much screenplay material from this bizarre administration. I just finished watching "Gaslit" about the Nixon administration and although Trump's clowns are far worse, they are cut from the same cloth. Sadly, such people are always with us.

[Ocelot II]

4. Holy crap...

[jgmiller]

6. There is a sedition and there is treason

and the more I read about Clark he should be charged with treason. He took an oath to uphold the constitution, probably multiple times in his career and his attempt to overturn an election based on his desire to be AG is treason. He was clearly telling Trump he would commit multiple illegal acts in return for being named AG.

[Comfortably_Numb]

7. I'm definitely ready for Jeffrey Jerkoff to start his time in the barrel. Fucker better not get off

with a slap on the wrist.

[PerceptionManagement]

8. Repiublicans were happy to steal everything from you.

[Ocelot II]

9. Oh, to have been a fly on that wall - Maybe Pence's fly got a better gig.

Watergate: Worst instance of presidential malfeasance in American history!
Trumpergate: Hold my beer....

[wnylib]

26. I recently took out the video of All The President's Men

from the public library. I lived through that period (my mid 20s) but had not watched the video or read the book.

I knew most of the major points of the cover up, but did not realize until watching the video how many in government were involved, i.e. the FBI and CIA according to the film. They stonewalled investigations as much as they could and intimidated members of CREEP from speaking to anyone. So, not just Nixon's plan. It went beyond him, which might also explain the pardon from Ford.

So I wonder how many of Trump's DOJ plants remain in their positions and how many DOJ employees are Trump sympathizers without having been planted by him.

[Ocelot II]

27. Watergate wasn't how we remember it - read this!

https://www.nextavenue.org/watergate-turns-50/

[wnylib]

30. Not many surprises in that linked article.

Not to me, anyway.

I was always suspicious of Deep Throat's motives and knew others who were, too.

RE: The Chennault Affair and Paris peace talks. It did come out eventually, although after Watergate. But even before it came out, there were suspicions about the failure of peace talks and Nixon's claim to have a "secret solution with honor" in Vietnam. There were discussions among my coworkers and the college student friends of my then boyfriend that they suspected that Nixon sabotaged the peace talks in order to make himself look like the only "savior" who could resolve the war.

Nixon's shady past, before becoming president, is not new to me and was not new to many. My ex, who was a political junkie and devoted Nixon hater, filled me in on a lot of them. (He was 7 years older than me. I was in grade school during the Ike years, and not born yet for Nixon's earliest politics.)

The film does say that there was a much larger and older, ongoing picture than Watergate, but only mentions a few specifics.

[chowder66]

10. What a piece of work.

snip

"Several days later, Rosen learned that Clark had once again met with Trump — and once again without informing him in advance, Rosen told the Senate committee. Clark told Rosen that Trump wanted him to consider becoming attorney general. Rosen was livid. “He says he won’t do it again. He did it again,” Rosen recalled. But Rosen said he did not have the authority to fire Clark, as he would have liked to do, because Clark was a presidential appointee.

Shortly after the clash between Clark and the senior Justice Department officials, Clark told Rosen that if he reversed his position and signed the letter to the Georgia legislature, then Rosen could remain attorney general, Rosen told the Senate committee. Rosen refused. Donoghue told Clark that “you went behind your boss’s back, and you’re proposing things that are outside your domain and you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rosen told the Senate committee."

[inthewind21]

11. Old news

This was widely reported on in 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-justice-department-election.html

[cilla4progress]

15. See article title:

"New details"

[Baitball Blogger]

13. Wait, I thought the idea was Eastman's?

[ancianita]

36. Both Clark and Eastmans pushed the idea, doesn't matter who thought of it first, does it?

They're both being investigated by the DOJ, and likely could lose their licenses -- Eastman, for Pence's part in nullifying votes in the House, and Clark, for legislatures' later part in voter nullification through fake electors.

Like the Eastman letter, the Clark letter drew support from an all-star cast of lawyers across the political spectrum. Donald Ayer, deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, signed, as did his former colleague Stuart Gerson, who served as acting attorney general under Bush.
The letter lays out Clark’s corrupt efforts to throw the Justice Department behind Trump’s plan to overturn the election. Although he joined the DOJ as an environmental lawyer, Clark ascended to assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil division in Trump’s final months. In this capacity, he hatched a plot to coerce swing states’ legislatures into denying the legitimacy of Biden’s victory and to award their electors to Trump instead. In a draft letter, Clark alleged that mass voter fraud had tainted the race, requiring legislatures to toss out the results—exclusively in states won by Biden—and declare Trump the true winner. When acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen refused to send this letter to seven state legislatures, Clark launched a conspiracy with Trump to oust Rosen and seize his position.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/john-eastment-jeffrey-clark-coup-consequences.html

[BumRushDaShow]

14. Apparently Scott Perry (PA-10) / Jeffrey Clark relationship was ID'd over a 1.5 years ago

and was posted about here - https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100215006394

And he was apparently the first Congressman requested to give a deposition by the J6 Committee per this - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142843763

[riversedge]

16. "After the New York Times reported in January 2021 about Clark's actions, he said he engaged in a "c

Clark is a nervy, stupid, man. Period.


https://wapo.st/3zECT6M

...................After the New York Times reported in January 2021 about Clark’s actions, he said he engaged in a “candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president,” denied that he had a plan to oust Rosen, and criticized others in the meeting for talking publicly and “distorting” the discussion.

Now, however, key witnesses have provided Congress with a fuller account of Clark’s actions, including new details about the confrontation that took place in the Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, which lasted nearly three hours.

A reconstruction of the events by The Washington Post, based on the court filings, depositions, Senate and House reports, previously undisclosed emails, and interviews with knowledgeable government officials, shows how close the country came to crisis three days before the insurrection.

The evidence, which fills in crucial details about Clark’s efforts, includes an email showing he was sent a draft of a letter outlining a plan to try to overturn the election by a just-arrived Justice Department official who had once written a book claiming President Barack Obama planned to “subvert the Constitution.”......................

[bringthePaine]

17. easy to urge MAXIMUM PENALTY for this shit

[AllaN01Bear]

20. they planed it a while back but still wow.lies and the lying liars .

[Bev54]

21. TY for the chance to read this, wide eyed again with what was going on

behind the scenes.

[rizlaplus]

22. Clark should go to jail

[SunSeeker]

24. Yes!

At least he's no longer at DOJ. He appears to be unemployed:

In August 2021 Clark was named the Chief of Litigation and Director of Strategy for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA),[8] which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights organization whose goal is "to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State." The NCLA is mainly funded by the Charles Koch Foundation.[44][45] The organization's current focus is opposition to vaccine mandates and other Covid-19-related regulations and orders.[46] In October, after Clark received a congressional subpoena regarding his participation in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, his name disappeared from the NCLA site.[10]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Clark

[Grins]

23. I don't see what's 'new' here.

Other than former Breitbart clown, Klukowski, all this was previously known. Nice recap, though.

[calimary]

25. And we have it.

That’s the main win. We have it. Researched, verified, documented, and reported by credible professionals.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

31. THANK YOU, cilla4progress

It's not often that I get to read anything on WaPo because of the paywall. So I really appreciate you doing this for us here at DU.

[Justice matters.]

32. Traitor Clark, a DOJ lawyer... did not know the DOJ is NOT the POTUS's defense law firm?

A Repuke, of course... just like Barr. How many hundred lawyers like them actually work at the DOJ?

And for how many years? Would be nice to know.

[Pluvious]

35. THIS will be a scene in the movie

Such epic hubris will stain our history ‘till our civilization has run its course

[ancianita]

37. I hope that movie comes out by August.