WASHINGTON — A Washington, DC, legal board moved Thursday to disbar a former Department of Justice lawyer in the first Trump administration for pressuring states to probe alleged voting irregularities and consider appointing new electors who could reverse the results of the 2020 election.
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulatory czar Jeffrey Clark will be suspended from practicing law for 30 days — and banned entirely unless the DC Court of Appeals strikes down the ruling.
“Lawyers cannot advocate for any outcome based on false statements and they certainly cannot urge others to do so,” the DC Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility stated.
Clark “persistently and energetically sought to do just that on an important national issue,” the board wrote in their ruling. “He should be disbarred as a consequence and to send a message to the rest of the Bar and to the public that this behavior will not be tolerated.”
“Yesterday, I received disappointing news from a 100% politicized DC Bar process,” Clark posted on his X in response. “But I also received an outpouring of support from a host of my friends in the law, many thoughtful legal and political commentators, but most importantly, from thousands of ordinary Americans like you. I am very grateful for that.
“And even though a major part of my identity is under assault — a law license the son of a truck driver who never graduated from high school managed to achieve though birthed to parents who could not themselves fully afford my fancy education — I am and remain surprisingly calm,” he added.
“I know I did the right thing in 2020 and 2021 during the first President Trump Administration and wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I had not proceeded to internally raise the election questions I did.”
In 2021, Democrats in Congress pointed to evidence that Clark, a former assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Division, had “attempted to involve the Department of Justice in efforts to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power” and urged special state legislative sessions to “evaluate” possible election fraud.
Trump had considered appointing Clark as acting attorney general in between his electoral loss to Joe Biden and the certification of the 2020 count by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.
Former AG Bill Barr had resigned in December 2020 after announcing there was no widespread fraud in the election.
Other Trump attorneys have faced disbarment, including John Eastman, the author of a memo claiming then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to reject vote counts from swing states; and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Clark serves as the acting head of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It’s unclear how the suspension would affect his ability to undertake the role.
James Burnham, a lawyer who recently left the Department of Government Efficiency to start an AI policy group, called the decision “an outrageous weaponization of the bar ethics process” and warned it “could be turned against any lawyer serving in government at any time. All steps must be taken to push back.”
Burnham and Clark “worked closely” together in the first and second Trump administrations, the ex-DOGE official noted.
The Post reached out to Clark’s lawyer for comment.
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