Former Acting Attorney General Rosen Calls Clark Moves Improper

Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said Jeffrey Clark violated the Justice Department’s conduct policy by meeting with President Trump in late 2020 and early 2021 to discuss election fraud allegations.

Rosen’s comments to a DC Bar panel came as Clark, the former US assistant attorney general, asserted his Fifth Amendment rights in response to questions at a proceeding that could determine whether he loses his law license over alleged ethics violations.

Rosen said he told Clark on Jan. 2, 2021 he “was really way outside his lane” by having contacts with Trump without top Justice officials present, and for seeking an intelligence briefing . “This was not his role or responsibility at the department,” Rosen said of Clark.

The Wednesday hearing was the second day of a DC Bar proceeding to help determine whether Clark should be sanctioned for his role at Justice after the 2020 election. Losing his law license, even temporarily, may limit Clark’s ability to return to Justice in a second Trump administration if the Republican nominee wins in the November election.

Clark has argued in court filings that the proceedings are being “weaponized” against Trump’s allies.

Clark asserted his right against self incrimination in response to several questions from DC Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton “Phil” Fox III about Georgia’s 2020 election results—and about a Dec. 28, 2020 letter from Clark that said Justice identified “significant concerns” about the election.

He also asserted executive privilege, deliberative process privilege, law enforcement privilege, and attorney-client privilege. Clark made such invocations more than 25 times. He joked at one point he was asserting “a veritable phalanx of privileges.”

Clark lawyer Charles Burnham said Fox’s call for Clark to testify—when it was clear Clark would invoke the Fifth—"is inherently humiliating to the witness.” Hearing committee chair Merril Hirsh said Clark still needed to take the stand.

Rosen said tensions between Clark and himself and his then deputy, Richard Donoghue, came to a head during Jan. 2 and Jan. 3, 2021 meetings at the Justice Department and White House. He said he and Donoghue rebuked Clark for contacts that were “totally improper” and “cannot happen again.”

Rosen said he expressed disappointment when Clark said he would accept a possibly forthcoming offer from Trump—which never was made—to have Clark take Rosen’s place as acting attorney general.

Rosen, who last July accepted an of counsel role at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, said he told Clark he was making “a colossal mistake.”

He was not interested in working as Clark’s deputy if Trump decided to promote him, Rosen said. “I had made clear that it didn’t really matter if I was fired or resigned, I wasn’t going to do things I didn’t think were justified by the evidence and the law,” he said.

Another of Clark’s lawyers, Harry MacDougald, asked Rosen if it was up to the president—not Rosen—to decide if Clark was acting “outside of his lane.”

Fox rested his case after Clark and Rosen testified. Clark called his first witness, Suzi Voyles, a Fulton County, Georgia poll worker who expressed concerns about the accuracy of the 2020 election vote count in Georgia.

Clark also plans to call Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Edwin Meese, US Attorney General under President Reagan, as witnesses in coming days.