webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

j bossert clark esq

primary pow on Our Children's Trust, mofo on CA, evil pending, mission accomplished on coup

note he started as corp polluter liar which got him in trump admin then seconded to coup

see jeffery bak 6 22

see michael best trump RNC fuckery

see passantino election LLC

SEE MARTIAL LAW

jan 6 referral DOJ indict

html "ERRED m

how did he go from straight GOP corp white shoe to trumpista insurrectionist? eastman?

---

RWW

06/11/2025

*Commentary

President Donald Trump’s illegal moves to turn the U.S. military against American citizens on American soil are the latest and most dangerous actions in a scheme by MAGA figures to erode constitutional checks and balances and allow Trump to impose his will on the country by asserting dictatorial powers like a tyrannical king or an American Caesar.

The protests in Los Angeles were apparently sparked by White House official Stephen Miller’s lust for higher deportation numbers and demand that ICE make more arrests of people without criminal convictions—despite the administration’s claims to be prioritizing deportation of violent gang members.

Miller has falsely described people’s efforts to protect their neighbors from terrifying abductions as “rebellion” and “insurrection” to justify Trump declaring emergency powers and deploying the National Guard and Marines. Trump has done the same, referring to the localized and mostly peaceful protesters as “an insurrectionist mob.”

It’s not that Trump needed much convincing. Trump has long admired and envied the power wielded by dictatorial leaders. As The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone has noted, “Trump has fantasized about using the military against citizens for much of his political career.”

Trump reportedly regrets not deploying the military against racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. Before the 2024 election he talked about using the military against “the enemy from within.” Before he was vice president, J.D. Vance declared that “we need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of our power.”

In his first term, Trump encouraged violent policing – he “gave police permission to be brutal,” in the words of journalist Adam Serwer. Since his return to power, the Justice Department has abandoned efforts to curtail abusive police violence—while Trump freed the violent Jan. 6 insurrectionists who attacked and injured Capitol Police on Trump’s behalf.

After Trump lost the 2020 election, MAGA activists like Michael Flynn and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes urged him to declare martial law to stay in power rather than acknowledge defeat. Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who reportedly argued that Trump could use the military to put down protests that would erupt if he refused to leave office, has remained on Trump’s teamand is now working at the OMB for Russ Vought, a key architect of Project 2025 and its plans for Trump to push the far-right’s agenda without regard for the law.

Since returning to power in January, the president and his henchmen have proven that predictions that a second Trump term would be for more dangerous to democracy were correct. Trump’s recent threat that anyone who dares protest his military parade—a multi-million-dollar birthday present to himself—would be met with “very heavy force” is a reflection of his tyrannical and antidemocratic contempt for checks and balances and disdain for dissent.

Far-right MAGA activists are urging Trump to go even further. Former White House aide Steven Bannon has declared that the Los Angeles protests are a sign that “we’re in the Third World War.” He wants Trump to order the arrest of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass if they resist the administration’s hostile takeover of Los Angeles. (The state of California is suing Trump over his deployment of the National Guard over the governor’s objections.)

While most Americans do not approve of Trump deploying the marines against protesters in Los Angeles, Republican members of Congress are cheering him on, a sign of how thoroughly the GOP has been corrupted and cowed by Trump’s demands for cultish loyalty. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to corrupt and politicize the military, firing the military’s top lawyers and telling soldiers that protesters in Los Angeles are “animals” and a “foreign enemy.”

People For the American Way is calling on Americans to resist the Trump administration’s dangerous escalation of violence and authoritarian disregard for the Constitution and law by participating in one of this weekend’s No Kings protests that are taking place around the country.

---

6 25

senator kickass:

TY channel: Time to Wake Up 299: How Empty and Worthless is the Power of Kings - YouTube

XO thaT wind and solar are not energy

jb clark omb social cost carbon 86 memo 150 to 190

700 billion subsidy

EPA carbon not pollut; us ff plants more than all but 6 cty

jerome powell fed shut dn our partic in int’l crntrlal banks 180 members gp: 4 min in disband task for on climate risk others refused; 86 own climate risk gp at fed;

yergin orzag 5k word manifsto for aff energy pragmatism; never mentions risk cost

---

---

1 25 politico

special counsel Jack Smith’s just-released report provides fresh insights into his bid to hold Donald Trump responsible for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Smith insisted he amassed enough evidence to win a conviction if the case had made it to trial, and he laid out a comprehensive compendium of the facts he might have presented to a jury. At the same time, his report struck a defensive tone, as he sought to explain why the case never made it that far.

The public report is also incomplete. Its second volume, which pertains to Smith’s investigation of the classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office in 2021, remains secret.

Attorney General Merrick Garland does not intend to publicly release that portion of the report, though he wants to share it with select lawmakers. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked any dissemination of it outside the Justice Department. And once Trump is inaugurated next week and assumes control of the department, it will be easy for him to forestall any formal release of Smith’s final assessment of the documents case.

Trump slams 'nut job' Jack Smith after judge temporarily blocks report

Still, the 137-page write-up on the election case is a final accounting of how Trump sought to derail the transfer of power four years ago, how investigators built and litigated an unprecedented conspiracy prosecution against a former president, and how that prosecution fizzled when Trump won back the White House.

Here are POLITICO’s top takeaways from the historic document.

Smith comes to Garland’s defense

A common sentiment on the left is that Garland was too deferential to Trump after Joe Biden took office and failed to unleash the full might of the department on the former president for nearly two years. The delay, critics say, made it much more difficult for Smith — once he was appointed in November 2022 — to bring Trump to trial before the 2024 election.

But Smith’s report emphasized that the Justice Department was aggressively investigating leads related to Trump long before the special counsel’s tenure began. Litigation tactics by Trump and his allies, Smith argued, were the key factors that slowed the process to a crawl.

For example, Twitter, newly purchased by Elon Musk, delayed Smith’s effort to access Trump’s account data for weeks despite a court order that ultimately resulted in the company being held in contempt and fined $350,000.

It took Smith more than a year to obtain text messages between Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. And the department spent months fighting to access communications of John Eastman, a lawyer who helped devise Trump’s last-ditch efforts to remain in power.

The most protracted battles of all stemmed from Trump’s “broad invocation of executive privilege to try to prevent witnesses from providing evidence,” Smith wrote. It took months of secretive legal proceedings to secure testimony from Trump White House aides such as Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino and Pat Cipollone. Former Vice President Mike Pence also resisted testifying until a court ordered him to reveal some — but not all — details about his interactions with Trump. Smith noted that judges broadly rejected Trump’s privilege claims, with one holding that he was engaged in an “obvious” effort to delay the investigation.

Smith also drew attention to what may have been his biggest foil: the Supreme Court. He pointed out that the justices rebuffed his effort to put Trump’s presidential immunity claims on a similar timetable to the one the court adopted five decades earlier in litigation over Watergate and President Richard Nixon’s tapes.

And Smith argued that the Supreme Court’s resolution of Trump’s immunity assertion essentially guaranteed another round of litigation that would have been all but certain to return to the justices if Trump had not won the election and the prosecution had continued.

Smith’s path not taken: An insurrection charge

Much of Smith’s report amounts to a justification of the special counsel’s “charging decisions” — his reasons for bringing four felony counts against the former president. Smith also explained publicly for the first time his decision not to charge Trump with one of the gravest potential crimes in DOJ’s arsenal: inciting insurrection.

The bottom line, Smith said, was legal uncertainty about the federal insurrection statute. The law had not been used in 100 years. It may not have applied to a situation in which a sitting president sought to illegally retain power rather than an outside force seeking to depose a lawful administration. And, in a notable concession to Trump, Smith acknowledged the evidence didn’t show that Trump intended to cause “the full scope” of violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The evidence established that the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay,” Smith concluded. But federal investigators, he said, “did not develop direct evidence — such as an explicit admission or communication with co-conspirators — of Mr. Trump’s subjective intent to cause the full scope of the violence.”

A few tantalizing tidbits of evidence

Much of the evidence that Smith recounted has already appeared in prior court filings or was unearthed by the congressional investigation into Jan. 6. But there were a few striking new details in Smith’s report:

Will the public get to see the primary documents?

Smith’s report described the trove of evidence he assembled in narrative form. But the fate of the trove itself could be even more significant than his ultimate conclusions.

The House Jan. 6 select committee similarly mounted a two-year investigation and produced a voluminous final report. But it was the committee’s enormous cache of witness transcripts and primary source documents — drawn from Trump’s files in the National Archives, emails obtained through subpoenas and evidence produced during court battles — that has proved more enduring.

Smith reached into areas the select committee could not, getting grand jury testimony from Pence, Meadows and other top aides, including some returning to the White House next week. Those transcripts remain sealed, but there are several legal efforts underway to bring them into public view.

The Justice Department is due to respond to two of those efforts this week, a potential window into whether prosecutors may deem the public interest in the underlying materials of greater value than their continued secrecy, particularly now that the criminal case has been dropped.

===

https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/08/15/here-are-19-people-named-sweeping-indictments-against-donald-trump/

no lnx

Here are the 19 people named in the sweeping indictment against Donald Trump

Here is a list of who is named in Fani Willis’ sweeping indictment of the nation’s 45th president and his allies.

By Tim Darnell, Atlanta News First staff and The Associated Press

Published: Aug. 14, 2023

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ sweeping indictment from her investigation into alleged attempts by former President Donald Trump to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election includes some of the most prominent figures in the Republican Party.

It comes just two weeks after the Justice Department special counsel charged him in a vast conspiracy to overturn the election, underscoring how prosecutors after lengthy investigations that followed the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol have now, two-and-a-half years later, taken steps to hold Trump to account for an assault on the underpinnings of American democracy.

Though the indictment is centered on Trump’s efforts to subvert election results in just one state, its sprawling web of defendants stands apart from the more tightly-targeted case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, which so far only names Trump as a defendant. The Georgia case also stands out because, unlike the two federal prosecutions he faces, Trump would not have the opportunity to try to pardon himself if elected president.

FULL COVERAGE: Timeline, history and key players of historic indictment in Georgia

“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” says the indictment issued Monday night by the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

The indictment charges Trump with making false statements and writings for a series of claims he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other state election officials on Jan. 2, 2021, including that up to 300,000 ballots “were dropped mysteriously into the rolls” in the 2020 election, that more than 4,500 people voted who weren’t on registration lists and that a Fulton County election worker, Ruby Freeman, was a “professional vote scammer.”

Here are the 19 people named in the indictment:

- JEFFREY CLARK: A U.S. Justice Department official who championed Trump’s false claims of election fraud, Jeffrey Clark presented colleagues with a draft letter pushing Georgia officials to convene aspecial legislative session on the election results, according to testimony before the U.S. House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Clark wanted the letter sent, but Justice Department superiors refused.

Willis’ indictments come after months of speculation into whether the first-term Fulton County district attorney would bring charges against the nation’s 45th president. Among the former president’s mounting legal troubles, Willis’ indictments mark the second time Trump has been linked to any alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Those charges include allegedly pressuring Georgia election officials to change the election’s results, including his now-famous phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021.

In February 2021, Willis opened a criminal investigation “into attempts to influence the administration of the 2020 Georgia General Election,” a contest that saw Joe Biden become the first Democrat to win Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992 by less than one percent of the state’s overall vote.

A special grand jury with subpoena power was seated later that May at her request. In court filings, she alleged “a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.” Willis’ investigation also examined an alleged plot involving 16 Republicans who served as fake electors, one of whom was allegedly then-state Sen. Burt Jones, now Georgia’s lieutenant governor.

Willis’ special grand jury investigation heard from 75 witnesses. Some of the more notable figures were Gov. Brian Kemp; Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr; Raffensperger; Duncan; former White House official Mark Meadows; former U.S. House speaker and Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich; and Republican South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Last year, Raffensperger told a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud “were false.”

Raffensperger, along with Gabriel Sterling, the office’s chief operating officer, appeared before the Democrat-led House Select Committee’s nationally televised public hearings. Raffensperger told the committee that the 2020 election went “remarkably smooth,” with average ballot-casting wait times between two to three minutes statewide. “I felt we had a successful election,” he said.

Trump has accused Willis of conducting a “strictly political witch hunt.” In a September 2022 statement, he also took aim at Atlanta as “number 1 in the country in murders and heinous crimes, especially on a per capita basis - even worse than now-fabled Chicago.”

“Yet the District Attorney there is spending almost all of her waking hours, which aren’t many, on attempting to prosecute a very popular president, Donald J. Trump, who got more votes in 2020 than any sitting president in the history of the United States,” Trump said at that time.

Timeline of Donald Trump/Georgia investigation

Trump timeline

Trump announced his 2024 White House candidacy last November.

Earlier this year, Willis notified Fulton County deputies she would announce charges from her investigation sometime between July 11 and Sept. 1. She also notified Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville her office planned to work remotely during the first three weeks of August and asked no trials be scheduled during that time.

Willis’ indictments are the latest in a series of legal troubles for the nation’s 45th president. Back in April, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. With Bragg’s indictment, Trump became the first former president in history to be criminally indicted at any level.

In early May, Trump lost a civil battery and defamation case against him in New York in a case brought against him by E. Jean Carroll. The writer claimed Trump assaulted her in a New York department store back in the 1990s. A Manhattan federal jury has ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million, which the former president is appealing.

Then, on June 13, Trump was arraigned at a federal courthouse in Miami on a single federal indictment that included more than 30 charges of mishandling classified documents after he left the White House in January 2021. Trump became the first ex-president ever to face criminal charges from the federal government he once oversaw.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing that federal investigation, was also responsible for overseeing the criminal investigation involving Trump’s alleged role in the U.S. Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, an investigation that yielded, earlier this month, the four-count felony indictment.

The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office sent deputies to both New York and Miami to observe how local law enforcement prepared for any demonstrations or possible unrest in the wake of Trump’s indictments.

In late July, security barriers were seen being set up around the Fulton County courthouse. Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said in early August his department would be ready for any demonstrations or civil unrest that may result from Willis’ indictments.

FULL COVERAGE OF DONALD TRUMP/GEORGIA INVESTIGATION

Trump Investigation

He also said the former president, if indicted, would be booked, photographed and processed at the county jail on Rice Street, a facility that has come under intense scrutiny over the last several months because of its allegedly deplorable conditions, and which is also the target of a U.S. Department of Justice civil investigation.

link

https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/08/15/10-indictments-approved-fulton-countys-2020-georgia-election-interference-investigation/

...The charges include:

...In total, there are 41 counts listed in the indictment. Trump is named in 13 of the counts.

Everyone named in the indictment is facing a violation of the Georgia RICO Act charge.

Willis said at a Monday night press conference that those named in the indictment are alleged to have engaged in a “criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election results.”

Willis said as is “the normal process in Georgia law,” the grand jury has also issued arrest warrants for those charged in the indictment. Willis said she is giving them until noon on Friday, Aug. 25 to voluntarily surrender.

==

THE STATE OF GEORGIA

V. DONALD JOHN TRUMP

Counts 1,5, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 2729, 38-39

RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI Counts 1-3, 6-7, 9,11,13,15,17,19, 23-24

JOHN ChaRLES EASTMAN

Counts 1-2, 9, 11,13, 15, 17, 19, 27

MARK RANDALL MEADOWS

Counts 1, 28

KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO

Counts 1, 9,11,13,15,17,19

JEFFREY BOSSERT CLARK

Counts 1, 22

JENNA LYNN ELLIS

Counts 12 RAY STALLINGS SNIITH III Counts 1-2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13,15, 17,19, 23, 25

ROBERT DAVID CHEELEY

Counts 1, 9,11,13, 15, 17,19, 23, 26, 41

MICHAEL A. ROMAN

Counts 1, 9, 11,13,15,17, 19

DAVID JAMES SHAFER

Counts 1, 8,10,12,14,16,18, 40

SHAWN MCAH TRESHER STILL

Counts 1, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18

STEPHEN CLIFFGARD LEE

Counts 1, 20-21, 30-31

HARRISON WILLIAM PRESCOTT

FLOYD

Counts 1,

3031

TREVIAN C. KUTTI Counts 1,

SIDNEY KATHERINE POWELL  Counts 1, 32-37

CATHLEEN ALSTON LATHAM

Counts 1, 8, 10, 12, 14, 32-37

SCOTT GRAHAM HALL

Counts 1, 32-37

misty hampton aka

Counts 1, 32-37

8 23 one of 6 unindicted co-conspirator in jan 6 indictment

bkgd context:

slate sweet gig

Until he launched a direct assault on American democracy, Clark’s résumé looked much like that of countless conservative lawyers. He clerked for Judge Danny Boggs, a hard-right Ronald Reagan nominee, and worked at the big law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Naturally, he**joined the Federalist Society**, frequently participating in the organization’s events and serving as chair of its environmental law and property rights practice group for seven years. Clark also taught at George Mason University School of Law (now Antonin Scalia Law School), a hub of conservative-libertarian legal studies lavishly funded by the Koch brothers. When he entered Trump’s Justice Department in 2018, he served as assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division; in that position, he sought to weaken federal environmental protections, freeing polluters to disregard long-standing regulations.

Clark defended BP in lawsuits against the company following 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. He also represented the :{U.S.:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Chamber of Commerce in cases challenging the federal government’s authority to regulate carbon emissions

OMG

2 23 e&e

the  lead environmental attorney for former President Donald Trump said that climate change policy is part of a larger plot to “meta control” Americans.

Jeffrey Clark, Trump’s assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s environment and natural resources division, spoke Saturday in Florida at a conference organized by the Heartland Institute, which has spent years attacking climate science.

Clark compared the Biden administration and climate advocates to the authoritarian pig characters in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Animal Farm.” He said the climate movement’s “foot soldiers,” such as “soccer moms” and recent college students, had been manipulated to believe climate scientists.

"“The pigs who actually run the system, I think they run it for communistic purposes, so that’s what explains the fact that there’s a debate about whether this environmental catastrophe thinking is religious or is it self-interested from dark forces,” he told the crowd. “I think it’s both.”

Clark unsuccessfully pressured Trump to appoint him acting attorney general so he could help the former president try to overturn the 2020 election. He now works for the Center for Renewing America, an organization created largely by former Trump officials to influence the next Republican administration.

The Heartland Institute’s annual conference was a who’s who of climate deniers, Trump administration officials, members of Congress and researchers who claim climate change is not a threat.

As Clark spoke, he held up a piece of cardboard on which he had written “meta control.”

Last year, the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots referred Trump and “others” to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution for alleged conspiracy to defraud the United States. Clark’s actions are a significant focus of the report, but it’s not clear if he was referred for prosecution. He claimed that the body cameras worn by law enforcement officials who raided his home in June were intentionally used to embarrass him because he was detained in his underwear in the driveway of his Virginia home as part of the investigation into overturning the election.

After the election, Clark pushed Trump to appoint him as acting attorney general after Bill Barr resigned. The committee found that among the people close to Trump seeking to overturn the 2020 election, Clark “stands out as a participant.” He embraced conspiracy theories about the election and wanted the Justice Department to issue a statement that it had found evidence of widespread voter fraud. The plan failed when senior Justice Department officials told Trump, in an Oval Office meeting days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, that they would resign en masse if Clark took control.

On Saturday, Clark told the Heartland conference that he had been “canceled as a result of the 2020 election, The New York Times, etc., and the Jan. 6th Committee.”

Clark also served as deputy assistant attorney general under then-President George W. Bush in the Environment and Natural Resources Division. He has fought government climate regulations and called himself a longtime “climate hysteria lawyer.”

He said at the Heartland conference that he was scheduled during the Bush administration to have a climate debate with environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but that Kennedy canceled. Clark praised Kennedy’s current embrace of anti-vaccine and Covid-19 conspiracy theories.

He also shared insider stories of his time as Trump’s top environmental lawyer and talked about plans that had been discussed in secret to erode environmental protections. One of those included a form of “climate court” where states could select a jury of sympathetic researchers to challenge the science undergirding environmental protections.

Clark told the Heartland conference that in 2018 a major wind developer pressured him to eliminate environmental protections for migratory birds because they threatened business. Clark said he refused because he thought renewable energy was harming Americans.

“They were begging me, ‘Please, please make this enforcement action go away.’ And of course,I told them to pound sand, because I’m not going to save them from the fact that they’re engaged in an energy boondoggle that hurts the American people,” he said.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who also spoke at the Heartland conference,said he was the “most ridiculed United States senator, particularly on climate.” Johnson, who has rejected basic climate science, told the audience that he believes rising temperatures are driven by natural warming trends, not the consumption of fossil fuels.

Climate scientists determined years ago that humans are responsible for rising temperatures. The last decade has seen the warmest global temperatures ever recorded.

Johnson, who was the Senate’s fourth-highest recipient of oil and gas donations in the last election cycle, told the crowd that he was“naturally skeptical” and refused to believe in settled climate science.

“You’ve got the other side that continues to proclaim that climate change is the greatest threat to mankind or to America,” he said. “I think the theme of my talk here today is that that is not true — the greatest threat to at least America, and I would say mankind, is radical leftism.”

philly inq

https://www.mcall.com/news/pennsylvania/mc-nws-pa-republicans-jan-6-help-trump-20221222-ccq7ly5w2rfergjbcnwdatya3a-story.html

hundreds of pages of deposition transcripts released Wednesday by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack offered new insights into the roles Pennsylvania Republicans played in aiding President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The committee is expected to issue the full report on its investigation on Thursday. But the newly released transcripts were filled with new details including that Mike Roman, a Philadelphia native and one of Trump’s top election advisers, helped spearhead the effort to send pro-Trump electors to Washington as Congress met to certify the election results that day.

They also revealed a previously undisclosed attempt by state Sen. Doug Mastriano to access certain voting machines days before Jan. 6 as well as references to a plan floated by the White House to sue Pennsylvania directly in the U.S. Supreme Court over its administration of the 2020 vote. The documents also shed new light on the role a congressional staffer for U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly played behind the scenes.

Here are some of the highlights from the committee’s interviews:

Mike Roman: A key Trump campaign operative’s role in the false electors scheme

Roman, a longtime Philadelphia Republican political operative, appeared to play a key role in organizing false electors in swing states such as Pennsylvania as part of a plot to overturn the election.

A former Philadelphia ward leader and senior adviser to the Trump campaign, Roman was designated by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as “the lead for executing the voting” by the fake electors Dec. 14, 2020, according to an email the committee cited in an interview transcript released Wednesday.

The interview transcript suggests the pro-Trump electors in Pennsylvania were concerned about possible legal exposure if they signed official certificates purporting to be the legitimate electors.

In the interview, investigators referenced a Dec. 12, 2020, email sent to Roman from Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro.

“Mike, here is my suggested language for dealing with the concern raised in the PA conference call about electors possibly facing legal exposure, parenthesis, at the hands of a partisan AG, close parenthesis, if they seem to certify that they are currently the valid electors,” the transcript says.

Investigators also asked Roman whether he knew if Mastriano, the state senator who ran as the GOP’s candidate for Pennsylvania governor this year, had expressed concerns about the elector plan. Roman pleaded the Fifth.

The transcript suggests Roman also played a role in organizing the delivery of Wisconsin Republicans’ fake elector certificate to Congress on Jan. 6. A person investigators identified as Michael Brown texted associates that he “should probably buy Roman a tie for sending me on this one. Hasn’t been done since 1876 ... ”

That’s an apparent reference to the disputed presidential election that year.

Roman refused to say whether he’d instructed Brown to deliver the document, the transcript says.

The interview transcript also references a briefing of Pennsylvania lawmakers in November 2020 about purported election fraud. On Nov. 8, 2020, Roman shared with an associate a screenshot of a message he’d obtained that said: “Maybe the Trump campaign should get some actual evidence of fraud and file in court. They’ve been horrible in their court filings. We just got a report from their legal team. They told us on caucus they have zero evidence.”

Roman declined to tell investigators who sent him the message or to discuss the briefing of Pennsylvania lawmakers, apparently delivered by Kentucky’s secretary of state.

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly: Staffer’s behind-the-scenes involvement in false electors effort

Committee investigators repeatedly asked Roman during his deposition what he knew about behind-the-scenes efforts to undermine the election by a longtime top aide to U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, a Butler County Republican and a top Trump ally in the House.

Between Nov. 21 and Dec. 4, 2020, Roman exchanged 25 messages with Kelly’s then-chief-of-staff, Matt Stroia, according to questioning in the deposition transcripts. Those included exchanges that suggested Stroia may have played a more active and earlier role in the efforts by Trump and his allies than was previously known.

His name had previously surfaced in the committee’s work in connection with efforts to deliver the slates of pro-Trump electors to Pence on Jan. 6.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has said his office passed along the lists to Pence but that it was Kelly’s office that provided it to him. And while Kelly initially denied Johnson’s claims as “patently false,” the congressman’s office later acknowledged an “internal investigation” found Stroia had been in contact with Johnson’s staff.

But Roman’s deposition before the Jan. 6 Committee suggests Stroia may also have played a role in organizing a raucous Nov. 25 state Senate hearing in Gettysburg, during which Mastrianoand Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis pushed unfounded claims of fraud in the Pennsylvania election. Trump called in from Washington to voice his support.

“I hope it turns out like we envisioned,” Stroia wrote to Roman three days before the hearing in a message quoted in the deposition transcripts.

During his interview with the Jan. 6 Committee, Roman pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer questions about it or discuss whether he or Stroia had any involvement in organizing the Gettysburg hearing.

But other messages cited in Roman’s deposition show Stroia was in direct contact with Giuliani, who spearheaded Trump’s election challenges in the state. In one exchange with Roman, Stroia said he’d directed the president’s lawyer to talk to Roman instead.

“Do you know why Mr. Giuliani would have been calling Mike Kelly’s chief of staff ... about presidential election issues rather than you, who was acting as director of election day operations for the campaign?” committee staffers asked. He added: “I told him that you will know everything I do.”

Asked to explain, Roman again pleaded the Fifth.

Doug Mastriano and Jenna Ellis: The state senator and Trump lawyer sought access to Pennsylvania voting machines

The committee’s interview with Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis also shed light on Mastriano’s postelection activities.

“We made good headway convincing [hopefully] two counties with Dominion machines in Pennsylvania,” Mastriano wrote in a Dec. 28 email to Ellis, according to the transcript.

In another email, Mastriano makes reference to efforts to gain access to “ballot images.”Ellis declined to tell investigators why Mastriano was interested in that.

In a Dec. 29 email, Mastriano told Ellis that he’d emailed Trump himself with a letter related to “securing voluntary access for Dominion forensics.”

Fulton County later gave a third-party firm access to its Dominion voting machines, facilitated by Mastriano and state Sen. Judy Ward, R-Blair, for a supposed “audit” of the votes. That prompted the state to decertify those voting machines and force the county to obtain new ones. It wasn’t immediately clear which other counties Mastriano and other Trump allies sought to hand over access to voting machines.

Elliswas also questioned about her contacts with Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutlerand Jake Corman and Kim Ward, the GOP leaders of the State Senate. She declined to answer questions, however, on any efforts she and Giuliani had made to pressure them to set aside the state’s election results.

Cutler previously told the committee that Giuliani and Ellis called him daily during the run-up to Congress’ certification of the election, looking to push a baseless theory that state legislatures could set aside election results based on unsupported suspicions of fraud and appoint a new slate of Electoral College delegates instead.

Cutler said he largely avoided those calls, thinking they were inappropriate and had his attorneys respond, asking Giuliani and Ellis to stop contacting him.

Jeffrey Clark: A White House plan to sue Pennsylvania in the U.S. Supreme Court

In December 2020, Trump had White House lawyers draft a complaint to sue Pennsylvania in the U.S. Supreme Court over the administration of its election, according to committee questioning in the deposition of former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark.

Clark, a Philadelphia native, has emerged as a central focus for the committee due to his role in a drama in which Trump briefly considered appointing him attorney general in the waning days of his administration.

Clark had been introduced to the president by U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a York County Republican and key ally of the president in Congress. And according to earlier testimony before the committee, Clark expressed a willingness to use the Justice Department to pressure state legislatures in battleground states to overturn their election results despite no evidence of significant fraud.

On Monday, the Jan. 6 Committee referred him to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution.

During two contentious deposition interviews with the committee in November 2021 and February 2022, Clark refused to answer almost any questions about his relationship to Perry, his conversations with Trump, or the ideas he floated on how the Justice Department could help contest the election. He repeatedly invoked executive privilege — the doctrine that allows presidents and their staff to resist some legislative oversight — as well as his Fifth Amendmentright against self-incrimination.

He also balked at answering questions about the draft complaint that a White House assistant sent to top officials at the Justice Department on Dec. 29, 2020, for a suit against Pennsylvania. Correspondence referenced in the deposition of Ellis, the Trump lawyer, also referenced a Trump campaign plan to ask the Supreme Court to order new elections in as many as eight states to “ensure electoral integrity.” Those suits were never filed.

Instead, the Trump campaign filed a brief in support of a long-shot lawsuit filed at the Supreme Court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, seeking to overturn Pennsylvania’s election. The justices declined to hear the case.

For his part, Clark during his deposition — in one of his only substantive exchanges with committee members — lamented the current partisan state of politics in Washington, recalling his own upbringing in a primarily white, working-class neighborhood near the foot of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge.

“My dad was a truck driver who never graduated from high school,” he said. “He was a lifelong Democrat and a Catholic. My mom was a lifelong Republican and a Protestant. I wound up as a blend of the two, a Catholic conservative Republican.”

His lawyer Harry MacDougald was more acerbic. He called the Jan. 6 committee’s questioning “railroading” and accused members of indulging in a “paranoid fantasy.”

“It is not enough in Washington to merely disagree with someone about policy questions,” he said. “Instead, they must be destroyed. Those who disagree with Mr. Clark seek his destruction by any means available.”

The QAnon Hummer Duo: Coordination among right-wing extremist groups

Deposition transcripts were also released Wednesday for two Virginia men who made headlines in Philadelphia when they showed up outside the 2020 vote count at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in a Hummer filled with guns and emblazoned with QAnon stickers.

But the transcripts show neither Joshua Macias, president of the organization Veterans for Trump, nor his bodyguard, Antonio LaMotta, were forthcoming in their interviews with committee investigators. Both men asserted their Fifth Amendmentrights again and again, citing their ongoing prosecution in Philadelphia for weapons violations and attempted election interference.

(They were both later convicted on the weapons counts in October, but acquitted on the election related charges. LaMotta has since been federally charged with illegally entering the Capitol on Jan. 6.)

The committee’s investigators attempted to quiz both men on their contacts with other right-wing extremist groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters — the leaders of which Macias and LaMotta were shown in videos to have interacted with Jan. 5.

One video played during an earlier committee hearing showed Macias meeting with Enrique Tarrio, then-president of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, head of the Oath Keepers, in a Washington parking garage the day before the Capitol attack. Committee members have previously cited the video to suggest some coordination among extremist groups in the run-up to Jan. 6.

But when asked in his deposition how he came to be in the garage, Macias remained tight lipped.

“I walked,” he responded.

Investigators asked him why. “I was asked to,” he said.

By whom? “Someone said, ‘Hey come here,” Macias replied.

He refused to say what they discussed in that meeting.

As for whether he considered himself a QAnon adherent, Macias responded: “I do not ascribe to people’s beliefs. I have my own belief system.”

Philadelphia Inquirer staff writers Jonathan Lai and Jonathan Tamari contributed to this article.

c pierce

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42320078/**fifth-amendmen**t-january-6/

garrett Ziegler was an aide to White House trade advisor and natural B-movie villain Peter Navarroduring the previous administration*. But Ziegler was a mighty piece of work himself. From the Daily Beast:

Garrett Ziegler, who recently went on a sexist tear against former White House colleagues, took to Telegram to post the personal information of men he identified as agents. “This is one of the two feds who signed the ‘Receipt for Property’ form, which detailed—at a very high level—the fishing expedition that the FBI performed at Mar-a-Lago,” Ziegler said on both Truth Social and Telegram. The former Trump administration staffer that worked under White House trade adviser Peter Navarro further listed out the FBI agents’ date of birth, work emails and linked to alleged family members’ social media accounts. “Hope he doesn’t get a good night’s sleep for the rest of 2022,” Ziegler wrote on Truth Social, responding to another Truth Social user’s photos of one of the alleged FBI officials who signed off on the inventory receipts on the warrant.

Went on a sexist tear, you say? From CNN:

In the 27-minute livestream, Ziegler used vulgar and misogynistic language to attack Cassidy Hutchinsonand Alyssa Farah Griffin, two women who worked for the Trump White House but have since publicly broken from the former President and cooperated with the January 6 panel. He also accused the January 6 House select committee of being “anti-White,” without any evidence. (The nine-member panel is led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, who is Black.) “They’re Bolsheviks,” Ziegler said in the stream, referring to the far-left communists who led the Soviet Union, “so, they probably do hate the American founders and most White people in general. This is a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign. If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed. And so, they see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right?”

As it happens, his sexist tear came not long after Ziegler had been deposed before the House select committee investigating the events of January 6. Ziegler was nowhere near as eloquent under oath as he was on the internet later. The transcript of his session was among 34 released by the committee Wednesday as it prepares its entire 800-some-page report. And in most of those transcripts—including Ziegler's, especially—the magic word is "Fifth."

You see, in an attempt to save time and effort, the various inmates of Camp Runamuck were allowed to simply say, "Fifth," to assert their constitutional right against self-incrimination. And judging by the number of times that right was invoked, it appears that almost anything said inside that crab bucket of a White House was self-incriminating—a possibility that, given that White House, I'm willing to entertain. (My favorite is the apparatchik who replied, "Fifth" when asked where they'd gone to college. The answer was Duke, and I completely understand.)

Garrett Ziegler, sexist ranter, was particularly cautious that he avoid the clever web of words in which committee counsel was attempting to enmesh his ass. His first invocation of the Fifth came when he was askedhow he'd obtained his job in the White House. But there were other, more intriguing ones. For example,

Q: Were you expecting violence in the Capitol...on January 6, prior to that date?

A: I'm invoking my right to silence under the Fifth Amendment.

Q: Did you instruct your wife or suggest your wife leave town prior to January 6 because of concerns about violence?

A: I'm invoking my right to silence under the Fifth Amendment.

Now, I am perpetually impatient with the argument that asserting one's Fifth Amendment right is tantamount to an admission of guilt. I was impatient when the former president* used that argument against Hillary Clinton's staffers who'd taken the Fifth to defend themselves against the congressional snipe-hunters when Clinton was secretary of State. For example, at a rally in Colorado in 2016, El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago—a man who'd invoked the Fifth 97 times during his first divorce proceeding—said, "Her staffers took the Fifth. So many people took the Fifth Amendment there was nobody left!" The 34 transcripts released Wednesday are the living embodiment of what the former president* was talking about.

There was some speechifying against the committee itself; Jeffrey Clark,the guy whom the plotters allegedly had lined up to be attorney general to give his blessing to the 'fake electors' scam, spent a long time haranguing the committee for what he said were its "pretenses" of fairness. Then he availed himself of the Fifth Amendment...120 times, beginning with whether or not he'd worked at the Department of Justice.

If god's in his heaven and all's right with the world, they'll all find gaily wrapped grants of immunity in their Christmas stockings. At which point, the only fifths in which they find comfort will be whatever they pour out when the day's testifying is done.

an 10 22

On Thursday, POLITICO reported that former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark is struggling to fend off disciplinary actions, and potentially the loss of his law license, as the Washington, D.C. bar investigates his role in the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"Jeffrey Clark appeared for a lengthy proceeding Thursday that is a prelude to a disciplinary hearing on claims he violated legal ethics in his persistent efforts to undercut the legitimacy of the 2020 election," reported Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein. "The heart of the issue: Did Clark merely offer up unwise suggestions to his superiors — hardly the basis for disciplinary action — or did his persistence in the face of a lack of evidence of fraud render his conduct so inappropriate that he should be punished?"

Clark allegedly gave the White House advice on how to fight the election results, in violation of DOJ communication policies, and in particular wanted to send a letter to officials in Georgia advising them on nonexistent "irregularities" in their vote count. Trump had wanted to appoint him as Attorney General in the final days of his presidency, but officials warned the former president there would bemass resignations if that appointment was made.

"Phil Fox, chief of the D.C. Bar Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which brought the complaint against Clark earlier this year, agreed that 'It is generally not a disciplinary violation to make a stupid suggestion,'" said the report. "But Fox said Clark went further by repeatedly seeking to get the Justice Department to send a letter warning of significant signs of fraud and urging state legislatures to reconvene and consider appointing new presidential electors. 'He came back and used coercive methods or means to attempt to get the letter sent even though he had no additional information' about fraud, Fox said during the videoconference session."

According to the report, Clark's attorney resisted this logic, saying, “They’re saying it’s OK to make a suggestion, but it’s not OK to persist in a suggestion.”

In addition to professional sanctions, Clark is facing a criminal investigation as part of the broader probe into Trump allies' plots around the election. In June, federal law enforcement officials came to his home and executed a search.

long/ hard confirm trump admin?

Environmentalists battled Clark’s appointment, pointing to the formerKirkland & Ellis LLP lawyer’s work representing BP PLC after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and hispublic criticism of the Obama administration’s landmark legal finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health.

Nine highlights from the Timeline below:

1. :{:{Meadows and Giuliani created a “parallel track” to raise election fraud claims}:

}:2. Trump campaign staff followed up on :{:{“Meadows’ theory” that tens of thousands of “illegal aliens” voted in Arizona}:

}::{3. Meadows helped introduce President Trump to DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, who was plotting to oust the acting attorney general and use the Justice Department to overturn election results in Georgia

}:4. Meadows expressed upset, along with Trump, in response to Attorney General Barr’s having told the Associated Press there was no election fraud:{ that could have affected the outcome in the election

}::{5. Meadows made a surprise visit to Georgia where he met with the Secretary of State’s lead elections investigator. Trump called her the next day on Meadow’s suggestion and in the call urged her to find fraud in Fulton County

}:6. Meadows arranged and participated in the call in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”:{; and during the call Meadows asked the Georgia officials to share voting data even after they told him they could not because it was protected by law

}::{7. In several communications with the Justice Department—in violation of White House and DOJ contacts policies—Meadows pressured the Department to investigate baseless allegations of election fraud

}::{:{8. Then-Acting Secretary of Defense’s chief of staff Kash Patel says he spoke to Meadows “nonstop” on Jan. 6}:

}:9. In his final days in office, Trump hoped to issue a preemptive pardon for Meadows, Giuliani and possibly himself

Timeline

me so happy

no lnx

Feds raid home of Justice Department official pressured by Donald Trump to overturn 2020 election

Former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division Jeffrey Clark (screenshot).

Brad Reed June 23, 2022

Federal law enforcement officials have raided the home of former Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, who pushed to have the department formally declare that the results of the 2020 election were illegitimate.

ABC News reports that federal agents conducted a search of Clark's home in Virginia on Wednesday morning, just one day before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riots was due to highlight his role in the attempt to overturn the election.

Former Trump acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen has told the House Select Committee that Clark lobbied to have Trump appoint him as acting AG, after which he would send a letter to Georgia urging them to rescind certification of the 2020 election.

Trump was initially intrigued by the idea, but he decided against it after multiple DOJ officials threatened mass resignations if he went through with it.

Developing...

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Maddow's bombshell: MSNBC host reveals suspicious link between ... ›

'Smoking guns all around': Conservative connects dots showing ... ›

Jeffrey Clark's 'election subversion' plot included 'brazen' things ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Jeffrey Clark Was Considered Unassuming. Then He Plotted With ... ›

Jeffrey Clark, former DOJ official, is referred for criminal contempt ... ›

Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting ... ›

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/16/jan-6-gohmert-lawsuit-pence-524839

no lnx many

INSURRECTION FALLOUT

The Jan. 6 puzzle piece that's going largely ignored

Rep. Louie Gohmert sued then-Vice President Mike Pence on Dec. 27. Donald Trump’s involvement in the case remains unclear.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who is now running for Texas attorney general, has said little about his lawsuit. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

By KYLE CHENEY

12/16/2021

As Donald Trump and his allies squeezed then-Vice President Mike Pence to single-handedly stop Joe Biden’s presidency in the weeks ahead of Jan. 6, they used one particular tool that’s been largely ignored ever since.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) sued Pence on Dec. 27, just as Trump was ratcheting up his pressure campaign against his vice president. Backed by a squad of lawyers associated with Trump ally and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, Gohmert argued Pence should assert unilateral control over certification, governed only by the vague wording of the Twelfth Amendment.

Gohmert’s move forced Pence to publicly resist Trump’s subversion of the election, only a week before the fateful Jan. 6 joint session of Congress. When the Justice Department stepped in to defend Pence from the lawsuit on Dec. 29, it marked the first time Pence signaled he wouldn’t fold to Trump’s demands.

Pence allies have long believed that Trump played a role in Gohmert’s legal strategy, and they’ve indicated that Trump was frustrated that the Justice Department intervened to defend his vice president against Gohmert’s suit. But what remains unknown is just how involved Trump was in Gohmert’s legal strategy. A spokesperson for the former president did not respond to a request for comment.

And while it’s unclear whether the Jan. 6 select panel is probing the genesis of Gohmert’s suit — which was quickly rejected by federal district and appellate courts in Texas — one committee member described it as an important episode in the runup to the violence at the Capitol.

“It’s a significant detail in that it was part of a plan to isolate and coerce Pence,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

A litany of new details about Trump’s pressure campaign against Pence have emerged in recent weeks. Those include memos from Trump attorneys John Eastman and Jenna Ellis that lay out fringe legal rationales for halting certification, as well as proof of further public and private force exerted by Trump himself. Gohmert’s suit is rarely mentioned in the publicly available pre-Jan. 6 timetable.

Gohmert’s goal, outlined in the suit, was to force Pence to ignore the 130-year-old law that governs the final certification of presidential elections and instead wield total authority over the proceedings. Pence ultimately decided that he lacked this power and his role was almost entirely ceremonial. He revealed his final decision on Jan. 6, shortly before a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol amid chants that he was a “traitor” and should be hanged.

As for why Gohmert led the suit, Powell has publicly indicated that one reason was because Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has jurisdiction over his home state of Texas. Alito, Powell argued, might have bought more time for pro-Trump forces to reverse the results by blocking Pence from certifying Biden’s victory. (There’s no evidence Alito was considering this).

MOST READ

Sasse likely to resign from Senate, putting all eyes on Ricketts

Kari Lake’s Arizona campaign looks like nothing you’ve seen before

Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to seditious conspiracy over Jan. 6 actions

How Influential Senate Democrats Shut Down a Bid to Call Witnesses Against Trump

The Capitol riot worked in Powell’s favor but also against it, in her stated view: It delayed a last-ditch Jan. 6 attempt to seek Supreme Court consideration of Gohmert’s suit but also provided more time for Alito to weigh the suit that afternoon. The decision by Pence and congressional leaders to keep certifying votes after the riot dealt a mortal blow to Gohmert’s legal fight, Powell said.

“Had [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi not rushed, the outcome of the case could have been different, and the President as well,” Powell wrote on her website in September.

Powell did not respond to requests for comment for this story but told POLITICO in September that she “was not speaking with the President in that time frame” around Gohmert’s suit. She did, however, famously meet with Trump in the Oval Office on Dec. 18 along with Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn and other advisers working to help Trump stay in power.

Gohmert, who is now running for Texas attorney general, has said little about his lawsuit. His office declined multiple requests for comment.

The Texan made headlines at the time, though, after the district court rejected his court challenge. He said the effect of the court decision would leave street violence as the only option to contest the election.

“In effect, the ruling would be that you’ve got to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM,“ Gohmert said on Newsmax on Jan. 1.

One aspect of Gohmert’s legal fight that went unnoticed at the time but is relevant in hindsight: One of Pence’s Justice Department defenders was Jeffrey Clark, then acting assistant attorney general.

In recent months, House and Senate investigators have revealed thatClark was marshaling allies inside DOJ who might help him deploy the department in support of Trump’s bogus claims of voter fraud.He pressured department leaders to issue a letter calling into question the results in multiple states, a push that then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen resisted. Trump came within inches of removing Rosen and installing Clark as acting attorney general, but relented amid a promise of mass resignations.

Rosen told congressional investigators that he viewed Clark’s role in the Gohmert suit as a sign that Clark had begun to come back into the fold, only to realize later that his colleague was still in contact with Trump about taking over the department.

A source familiar with Rosen’s thinking said that even in hindsight, it’s not clear Clark’s involvement with the Pence suit was improper.

“The outcome in that case was correct, and there’s no evidence even in hindsight so far that Clark tried to do anything sketchy on that front,” the source said.

But it’s unclear whether Pence ever realized that Clark — while simultaneously fending off Gohmert’s case — was in talks with Trump about effectively commandeering the DOJ on the president’s behalf. The Senate investigation of Clark’s actions showed that one day after his name first appeared in the Pence case, he told Rosen that Trump would be making him acting attorney general within hours.

An attorney for Clark declined to answer questions about Clark’s involvement in the Gohmert lawsuit.

“Mr Clark has taken a strong stance to protect President Trump’s Executive Privilege,” attorney Harold MacDougaldsaid. “He will continue to do so.”

The Jan. 6 committee has already voted to hold Clark in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify but has deferred asking the House to send the matter to the Justice Department while it awaits Clark’s return for a deposition as soon as this week. Clark’s attorney has indicated that his client intends to plead the Fifth, and the panel has indicated that it expects Clark to do so on a question-by-question basis.

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection meets to vote on pursuing contempt charges against Jeffrey Clark.

[CONGRESS

Jan. 6 investigators’ new challenge: Trump allies pleading the Fifth]

On Wednesday, Clark’s former deputy Ken Klukowski was seen heading into an interview with Jan. 6 committee investigators.

In revisiting the Gohmert case, POLITICO reached out to each of the lawyers involved, includingPowell associates Howard Kleinhendler, Julia Haller and Lawrence Joseph. Joseph was one of the attorneys who crafted Texas’ failed legal effort — later joined by Trump with a brief signed by Eastman — to get the Supreme Court to invalidate election results in four key states Biden won.

“I do not talk about litigation with the media unless a client directs me to do so, which has not happened,” Joseph said in an email.

A fourth attorney, Texas-based William Lewis Sessions, also declined to comment and copied Gohmert’s House email address on the reply.

“The areas of interest you have indicated are ones for which I either have no knowledge or which I believe are protected by a privilege,” he said. “The person who would have the best knowledge is Representative Gohmert, who was one of my clients.”

Gohmert did not respond to this email or a subsequent one.

FILED UNDER: JOE BIDEN, JOE BIDEN 2020, MIKE PENCE, DONALD TRUMP,

jbc

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/fbi-interviews-trump-attorney-in-connection-with-steve-bannons-contempt-case/

no lnx many twt

'The smoking gun': Legal experts reflect on the 'breathtaking criminality' exposed in latest J6 hearing

Former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division Jeffrey Clark (screengrab).

Sarah K. Burris and Raw Story June 23, 2022

The fifth of the public hearings for the House Select Committee investigating the attempt to overthrow the election focused on the extent to which the former president attempted to use the Justice Department to change the 2020 election.

The hearing came on the heals of federal agents raiding the home of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who was alleged to have penned a letter that would have declared the election questionable.

Witnesses Jeffrey Rosen, Steven Engel and Richard Donoghue, who were all senior DOJ officials in the Trump administration, described to the committee how they met with Donald Trump in the White House to discuss what the former president said was election fraud.

Legal experts watched in awe of the revelations, claiming that former Acting Asst. Attorney General Jeff Clark is in big trouble for his role in the attempt to overthrow the election. On multiple occasions, the former Justice Department officials said Clark and Trump led an effort to subvert the 2020 election after the fact.

:{

}:

When asked about it under oath, Clark pleaded his Fifth Amendment rights.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-election.html

no lnx

Jeffrey Clark Was Considered Unassuming. Then He Plotted With Trump.

Justice Department colleagues said they were shocked by Mr. Clark’s embrace of the president’s falsehoods and plan to oust the acting attorney general in an effort to overturn Georgia’s election results.

Colleagues said they had seen Jeffrey Clark, who was the head of the Justice Department's civil division, as an establishment lawyer who was not particularly Trumpist.

By Katie Benner and Charlie Savage

Published Jan. 24, 2021

Updated June 16, 2022

WASHINGTON — It was New Year’s Eve, but the Justice Department’s top leaders had little to celebrate as they discussed Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the civil division, who had repeatedly pushed them to help President Donald J. Trump undo his electoral loss.

Huddled in the department’s headquarters, they noted that they had rebuked him for secretly meeting with Mr. Trump, even as the department had rebuffed the president’s outlandish requests for court filings and special counsels, according to six people with knowledge of the meeting. No official would host a news conference to say that federal fraud investigations cast the results in doubt, they told him. No one would send a letter making such claims to Georgia lawmakers.

When the meeting ended not long before midnight, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen hoped that the matter was settled, never suspecting that his subordinate would secretly discuss the plan for the letter with Mr. Trump, and very nearly take Mr. Rosen’s job, as part of a plot with the president to wield the department’s power to try to alter the Georgia election outcome.

:{

}:

It was clear that night, though, that Mr. Clark — with his willingness to entertain conspiracy theories about voting booth hacks and election fraud — was not the establishment lawyer they thought him to be. Some senior department leaders had considered him quiet, hard-working and detail-oriented. Others said they knew nothing about him, so low was his profile. He struck neither his fans in the department nor his detractors as being part of the Trumpist faction of the party, according to interviews.

The department’s senior leaders were shocked when Mr. Clark’s machinations came to light. They have spent recent weeks debating how he came to betray Mr. Rosen, his biggest champion at the department, and what blend of ambition and conviction led him to reject the results of the election and embrace Mr. Trump’s claims, despite all evidence to the contrary, including inside the department itself.

The plot devised by Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump would have ousted Mr. Rosen and used the Justice Department to pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. But Mr. Trump ultimately decided against firing Mr. Rosen after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.

Mr. Clark declined to comment for this report, but he reiterated his assertion that The New York Times’s account of his conversations with Mr. Trump, first reported on Friday, and his colleagues was inaccurate. He said he could not detail those inaccuracies because of legal privilege issues. And he said all of his official communications “were consistent with law.”

Image

“The story kind of shocked me because this is not the Jeff that I know,” said Theodore H. Frank, a friend and former colleague. ]

Some of his friends said that those who told the press about his final days at the Justice Department painted a picture of a man they do not recognize.

“The story kind of shocked me because this is not the Jeff that I know,” said Theodore H. Frank, a friend and former colleague. “I know Jeff as a guy who really cares about the rule of law and, you know, just a rumpled, thoughtful lawyer who is an intellectual — not a Machiavellian backstabber.”

Mr. Clark had spent two years leading the Justice Department’s environmental division, where he was seen as a standard Republican lawyer political appointee — a member of the conservativeFederalist Society with a skepticism of rules that cut into corporate profits.[WELL SET FOR PENSION PLAN PAYOFF?]

But now, Mr. Clark, 53, has become notorious. A person who has worked closely with Kirkland & Ellis, where Mr. Clark spent most of his career outside two stints in the George W. Bush and Trump Justice Departments, said there appeared to be scant chance that the law firm would rehire him.

Friends and critics alike reject the notion that Mr. Clark is an operator, describing him as “nerdy” and “thoughtful.”

Mr. Frank, who met Mr. Clark when both worked at Kirkland & Ellis in the 1990s and described himself as a Federalist Society member who voted for President Biden, said he was reserving judgment about the incident. Others were more direct.

“This is the first wave of character assassination, of people going after the most effective lawyers in the Trump administration,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who worked with Mr. Clark when she worked at the Environmental Protection Agency in the clean air division and as chief of staff to Andrew R. Wheeler when he was the agency’s administrator. She was struck by the fact that Mr. Clark’s colleagues were so upset and fixated on an event that ultimately did not happen. Mr. Trump, after all, did not  replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark or have the Justice Department contact Georgia lawmakers.

She said Mr. Clark was most likely discussing with his colleagues and the president “a range of options,” just as he was known for doing in his work advising her agency.

Some of Mr. Clark’s associates said he could be pedantic. As a manager, he made no effort to hide when he had little respect for his career subordinates’ opinions.

He is not known for being understated on the topic of himself. Where the typical biography on the Justice Department website runs a few paragraphs, Mr. Clark’s includes the elementary school he attended in Philadelphia, a topic he debated in college and that he worked for his college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.

After graduating from Harvard in 1989, Mr. Clark earned a master’s degree in urban affairs and public policy from the Biden School of Public Policy at the University of Delaware in 1993 and a law degree from Georgetown University in 1995.He clerked for an appeals court judge, Danny Boggs, who was known for giving prospective clerks quizzes that tested not just their knowledge of the law, but also a range of esoteric trivia.

Mr. Clark then worked for Kirkland & Ellis from 1996 to 2001, followed by a stint in the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division during the Bush administration, before returning to Kirkland in 2005 as a partner, but not one with an equity stake in the firm, according to a person who worked closely with him at the law firm. He held the title of “non-equity partner,” which meant that he did not share in the firm’s profits or make leadership decisions.

When Mr. Clark returned to the Justice Department as the head of the environmental division in 2018, he flew under the radar. Like other Republican officials, he narrowly interpreted the division’s legal authority and had a typically tense relationship with career lawyers when it came to enforcing anti-pollution laws.

In one instance, Mr. Clark held up Clean Water Act enforcement cases because of a pending matter before the Supreme Court that career lawyers felt did not directly relate to their work, according to a lawyer with knowledge of those cases. The Supreme Court was hearing a matter that involved discharges that flowed through groundwater before reaching waters regulated by the federal government, and the department was working on a case that involved flows over land.

:{

}:

His employees believed that Mr. Clark hoped the court would curtail the law’s reach in a way that would apply to overland spills, too,  but by a 6-to-3 ruling, it did not.

In a different case, he disagreed with a recommendation that the civil division made to the Office of the Solicitor General, and ultimately got his way after asking the general counsels of other agencies to also push back on the recommendation.Civil division employees said he did not tell them that he would do this, and felt that had circumvented the proper process.

Image

Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen had admonished Mr. Clark over his push to help President Donald J. Trump overturn the election.]

While Mr. Clark oversaw environmental cases, sometimes working late into the night and personally reviewing briefs, the department’s civil division was in turmoil. Its leader, Jody Hunt, sometimes clashed with the White House Counsel’s Office and, later on, with Attorney General William P. Barr, over how best to defend the administration.

Mr. Hunt resigned with no warning in July, leaving his deputy to run the division while Mr. Barr and Mr. Rosen searched for an acting leader among the department’s thinned-out ranks. Mr. Clark wanted the job, which was a considerable step up in stature, and Mr. Rosen supported the idea even though he was already a division head, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

After he took the helm of the civil division in September, colleagues began seeing flashes of unusual behavior. Mr. Clark’s name appeared on eyebrow-raising briefs, including what would turn out to be anunsuccessful effort to inject the government into a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump by a woman who has said he raped her more than two decades ago. He also signed onto an attempt to use the Justice Department to sue a former friend of the first lady at the time, Melania Trump, for writing a tell-all memoir.

He made clear to lawyers who produced draft briefs that they must spell out his name in full, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, according to a former official.

Others said he mounted an idiosyncratic push to remove the word “acting” from his official title — acting assistant attorney general of the civil division — citing an old department legal opinion from the 1980s. Officials denied his request.

2019

During the hearing, Jeff Clark, from the Justice Department, argued that there is no substantive constitutional right to a stable environment.Julia Olson, the co-lead attorney for the plaintiffs and the executive director of Our Children’s Trust, a group that has been bringing climate-litigation cases around the country, argued that the government misunderstood the plaintiffs’ claims.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-right-to-a-stable-climate-is-the-constitutional-question-of-the-twenty-first-century

no lnx

the Right to a Stable Climate Is the Constitutional Question of the Twenty-first Century

By Carolyn Kormann

June 15, 2019

On June 4th, in a packed courtroom in Portland, Oregon, Judge Andrew Hurwitz, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, posed an unusual hypothetical question.“Assume that we have rogue raiders come across the Canadian border of the Northwest. They are kidnapping children of a certain age and murdering them,” he said. “The White House refuses to do anything and Congress doesn’t act. Can those people”—the terrorized families and communities—“go to court to compel action?” He was asking Jeff Clark, the lawyer representing the federal government, the defendant in the case. Clark replied, “My answer is no.”

Judge Hurwitz, along with Judges Mary Murguia and Josephine Staton, was presiding over oral arguments in Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. the United States, better known as the climate kids’ lawsuit. In August of 2015, the twenty-one plaintiffs, who then ranged in age from eight to nineteen years old, sued the Obama Administration and various federal agencies, alleging that the government’s policies on fossil fuels advanced catastrophic climate change and therefore violated the right, guaranteed to them under the Fifth Amendment, that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

In other words, as Judge Hurwitz’s hypothetical suggested, their suit is an attempt to compel action from a government that is ignoring (and furthering) a life-threatening danger that they face. Since then, the case has ricocheted through the courts, gaining strength as urgency around climate change has increased and the Trump Administration has continued to deny that a problem exists. (“The climate goes both ways,” President Trump said in London, last week. “I believe that there’s a change in weather and I think it changes both ways.”) Instead, the Administration has aggressively promoted and expanded the use of fossil fuels, recently announcing that natural gas would be rebranded as “freedom gas.”

Hurwitz asked his question at the start of the hearing, establishing the stakes and reflecting the gravity with which the judges were weighing the plaintiffs’ claims. It pointed to an issue at the heart of the case, and at the heart of most climate litigation—the separation of powers. “The central issue the Ninth Circuit is grappling with is what is the role of the courts vis a vis Congress and the executive branch,” Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School and the faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, wrote me in an e-mail. “If a building is on fire and all the firefighters are off at a convention, can the neighbors break into the firehouse and run the firetrucks themselves? Or do they have to wait for permission, while the building burns down? Likewise, if the planet is on fire and Congress and the Administration are checked out, can the courts act on their own?”

Since most major environmental statutes date to the nineteen-seventies, and Congress has not been able to pass a single major environmental law since 1990, the Environmental Protection Agency, other federal agencies, and the courts have been forced to address current problems with laws that are decades old. (The main problem now is that the Senate will not act. In early May, as the House prepared to vote on a new bill, the Climate Action Now Act, which would force the Trump Administration to remain in the Paris climate agreement, the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, said that it would “go nowhere.”) 

Once Trump was elected, and federal agencies no longer had a mandate to address climate change, the courts became the only branch of government where action might be possible. But, in the absence of adequate climate-policy laws, the courts must find their right to act in the Constitution. Two days after Trump’s election, a federal judge for the District of Oregon, Ann Aiken, found that right and issued a major decision, denying the government’s motion to dismiss the Juliana case. “Where a complaint alleges governmental action is affirmatively and substantially damaging the climate system in a way that will cause human deaths, shorten human lifespans, result in widespread damage to property, threaten human food sources, and dramatically alter the planet’s ecosystem, it states a claim for a due process violation,” Aiken wrote.

“I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” A trial date was set for early last year, then postponed until last fall. The government, meanwhile, turned to the Supreme Court, asking the Justices to prevent the trial from going forward. In November, they declined to do so, determining that the government needed to bring its objections before the Ninth Circuit first. The Ninth Circuit now must decide whether the case can, finally, proceed to trial.

During the hearing, Jeff Clark, from the Justice Department, argued that there is no substantive constitutional right to a stable environment.Julia Olson, the co-lead attorney for the plaintiffs and the executive director of Our Children’s Trust, a group that has been bringing climate-litigation cases around the country, argued that the government misunderstood the plaintiffs’ claims.

She said, “The Supreme Court has already recognized that the liberties that we all hold include our right to bodily integrity and personal security and family autonomy. So this court doesn’t need to step out of bounds and recognize any kind of new right, it can stick with the bedrock fundamental rights that we all—”

At this point, Judge Hurwitz interrupted her, saying, “Actually, to be fair, you’re arguing for us to break new ground.” He added, “I’m sympathetic to the problems you point out, but you shouldn’t minimize—you shouldn’t say this is just an ordinary suit, and all we have to do is follow A, B, and C, and we get there. You’re asking us to do a lot of new stuff, aren’t you?” Olson replied, “We’re asking the court to apply bedrock constitutional law and principles to a wholly new set of facts.”

The government, for its part, disputed some of those facts. Judge Aiken had found that the plaintiffs had standing to sue because they had demonstrated three things: that they had suffered particular, concrete injuries; that the cause of their injuries was “fairly traceable” to the government’s actions; and that the courts had the ability, at least partially, to remedy these injuries. On the first two parts of standing, the government’s case is weakening by the minute, owing especially to the growing body of attribution science—studies published in peer-reviewed journals that directly link extreme weather events, such as huge hurricanes and raging wildfires, to climate change. “Evidence to meet the standing burden has gotten much stronger,” Ann Carlson, an environmental-law professor at U.C.L.A., told me.

All the plaintiffs were in the courtroom for the hearing. They have each submitted sworn testimony to the court, explaining the personal injuries that climate change has caused in their lives. The youngest, Levi Draheim, who is now eleven, lives in the barrier-island community of Satellite Beach, Florida, which his family has been forced to evacuate several times, due to hurricanes and floods. Jayden Foytlin, who is fifteen and lives near the Louisiana coast, suffered emotional trauma when her home was severely flooded in 2016 and 2017. In her testimony, she describes how her family, having nowhere else to go, slept in the living room in a “house that was full of sewage and flood water damage.”

Journey Zephier, nineteen, of Hawaii, has watched treasured coral reefs near his home die, due to ocean acidification and warming temperatures, and last year saw his home flood when an unprecedented fifty inches of rain fell in less than twenty-four hours, which also caused landslides and power outages in his community. Jamie Butler, eighteen, had to leave her home and her relatives in the Navajo Nation, because of severe drought and water scarcity. Kelsey Juliana, the lead plaintiff (and the oldest, at twenty-three), grew up in Eugene, Oregon, where she is now an environmental-studies major at the University of Oregon. She, along with eight of the other plaintiffs, described adverse health impacts from the wildfires that rage in and around their home towns practically every year. Some also wrote about the damage that extreme weather events and climate threats have caused to their cultural heritage; others described psychological troubles—nightmares, anxiety, depression.

Olson and the other lawyers can make a strong case that the plaintiffs’ injuries are “fairly traceable” to the government’s actions, considering that, for instance, almost twenty-five per cent of U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions come from fossil-fuel development on federally owned land. There is also plenty of evidence that the government has known for many decades the dangers that adding greenhouse-gas emissions to the atmosphere would bring.The Ninth Circuit judges seemed more than sympathetic to these arguments—both to the plaintiffs’ injuries and to the fact that they could be linked to the government’s policies. “You present compelling evidence that we have a real problem,” Judge Hurwitz told Olson. “You present compelling evidence that we have inaction by the other two branches of government. It may even rise to the level of criminal neglect.” With statements like that, Carlson told me, “That’s about as sympathetic a panel as the plaintiffs are going to get.”

But Hurwitz and the two other judges hesitated about the third condition of standing—the ability of the courts to redress the plaintiffs’ injuries—which ultimately goes back to the separation of powers.He said, “The issue here is whether this branch of government, embodied by the three of us today, has the ability to issue the relief that your clients seek.” Olson argued that it did, because the case was not based on the government’s inaction (as Hurwitz’s hypothetical had implied) but, rather, on its affirmative and substantial actions to facilitate, subsidize, and promote a fossil-fuel-based energy system. 

The courts could, therefore, declare that the government must use its statutory authority to transition the economy away from fossil fuels, and order government agencies—such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration—to create national plans detailing how such a transition could be achieved. The evidence presented at trial—documents, cross-examination testimony, expert witnesses—would provide the specifics that such plans needed to include, Olson said.

The judges did not seem entirely convinced that the courts had the power to intervene in the activities of so many parts of the executive branch—at least eight government agencies would be involved. “I’m trying to figure out if we have done anything “on this scale, to this proportion,” Judge Murguia said. “I’m almost drawing on a clean slate.” Olson said that “the scale of the problem is so big because of the systemic conduct of the government.” As precedents, she pointed to Supreme Court cases in which the courts were deeply involved in the remedy of constitutional violations. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Court declared that segregation was unconstitutional in public schools, and then, in a follow-up ruling, ordered all federal, state, and local districts to desegregate. In Hills v. Gautreaux, the Court upheld an order requiring the Department of Housing and Urban Development to rectify discriminatory public housing.

In the government’s view, as Clark presented it, “the sweeping nature of the case” made it “a direct attack on the separation of powers” and “an assault on the Constitution’s design.” But, in the most basic terms, wasn’t the Constitution designed so that one branch of government can check the other two, if their behavior fails to protect and preserve individual liberties? It was, but, asHurwitz noted, “We may have the wrong Congress and the wrong President. That’s occurred from time to time over history. The real question for us is whether we get to intervene because of that.” That is to say, the judges need to decide whether they agree that the government’s action go beyond politics and are violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights—rights that only exist if we have a stable climate.

The judges will take a few weeks to issue their decision. If they decide in the plaintiffs’ favor, the government will likely petition the Supreme Court, again, to prevent the trial from proceeding. The Justices may decide that they need the full factual record that a trial would provide; they generally want things fully baked.

For observers thinking about long-term climate-litigation strategy, though, there is concern that the present bench of Justices might take the opportunity—either after the trial or in refusing to let it go forward—to set a precedent that could be damaging to environmental protections in lawsuits down the road. Worst of all, it might lead them to revisit Massachusetts v. E.P.A., the landmark 2007 decision that established that the E.P.A. has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote on that case; Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a dissenting opinion. “There is real worry,” Michael Gerrard said.

The strategic question of how far to push environmental cases is one that many groups face. All the challenges to the Trump Administration’s rollbacks of Obama’s climate policies are still pending in lower courts. If an environmental group loses, and takes the case to the Supreme Court, “you might get a decision that is even worse, that has greater reach,” Carlson said. Still, the fact that the Juliana case has come this far has had a galvanizing impact.Thousands of people, across the country and around the world, watched a live stream of the hearing—on the Ninth Circuit’s YouTube channel, on outdoor screens in parks—and the judges commented several times on the widespread interest in the case. It seemed indicative of what’s to come. In Olson’s concluding statement, she put the matter in its appropriate context. “If we look back on the twentieth century, we can see that race and sex discrimination were the constitutional questions of that era. And when our great-grandchildren look back at the twenty-first century, they will see that government-sanctioned climate destruction was theconstitutional issue of this century

JAN 6 TRUMP COUP

One of the most striking figures in former President Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate effort stay in power after losing the 2020 election was Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer at the Justice Department who urged Trump to make him attorney general days before the insurrection so that he could drag the Justice Department into Trump’s schemes.

Clark’s superiors had resoundingly rejected his planto have the Justice Department send letters to leaders in battleground states Trump lost, letters that would have falsely claimed that the DOJ had “identified significant concerns” about the elections and suggested that legislators send pro-Trump electoral votes to Congress.

But after being rebuffed by DOJ leaders, Clark went around them to meet directly with Trump—multiple times. Three days before the insurrection, Clark urged Trump to name him attorney general. Other DOJ officials who had gotten wind of the meeting told Trump that such a move would lead to mass resignations. In the end, Trump blinked.[SAT NIGHT MASSACRE]

The Washington Post reported this week that Clark also requested an intelligence briefing about “an allegation that the Chinese were controlling US.-based voting machines via internet-connected smart thermostats,” a wild theory even for Trump’s stolen-election conspiracists and, not surprisingly, one that the DOJ did not consider credible.

Clark’s attempted end-run around the Justice Department has been documented by media and the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Clark is expecting more negative attention from the committee,***he told Steve Bannon’s “War Room**” podcast after the committee’s first public hearing last week.

On Bannon’s June 13 show, Clark falsely claimed that the committee had no right to investigate his actions because, he said, he had nothing to do with the physical attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. In fact, the committee has made it very clear from its inception that its focus is not only on the events of Jan. 6 but also on the related conspiracy to overturn the election that led up to the attack. Clark has reportedly cited the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer committee questions. Bannon told Clark he would have him back on the show to address information about him that comes out in other Jan. 6 committee hearings.

Bannon isn’t the only Trumpworld figure rewarding Clark’s loyalty and apparent willingness to do anything to keep Trump in power. This morning, Center for Renewing America President Russ Vought,a former Trump administration official, announced that his group had hired Clark as a senior fellow to work on “election integrity” and other issues.

Vought was the guy who issued a ban on anti-racism training by federal agencies and contractors in the closing months of the Trump administration, part of a right-wing political strategy to mobilize angry voters via fearmongering about critical race theory. The Center has helped drive the manufactured anti-CRT panic; its toolkit has been promoted by the pro-Trump prayer-warriors at Intercessors for America. Vought has said the election of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin was proof of its power as a culture war weapon.

Here’s how Vought characterized Clark’s attempted subversion of the presidential election:

He brought up legitimate concerns to President Trump about potential voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election. This isn’t just a defensible action, but one that true patriots should be proud of.

Now he’s under intense scrutiny from the January 6th committee. It’s clear they want to make him a centerpiece of their witch hunt despite the fact that he fought to expose potential voter fraud.

We should learn even more about Clark’s role in Trump’s bid to retain power in the days ahead. The House select committee is expected to focus one of its upcoming public hearings on actions taken by Trump and his team to pressure the Justice Department into supporting his voter fraud claims and intimidation efforts directed against state election officials.

Tags: Capitol Insurrection Election 2020 Center for Renewing America Trump Administration

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeffrey-clark-deposition_n_6185b98ce4b06de3eb75685d

no lnx

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/592519-former-doj-official-jeffrey-clark-meets-with-jan-6-panel/

2/22?

effrey Clark,

MORE(JEFFREY CLARK)

a central figure in former President Trump’s pressure campaign at the Justice Department, sat Wednesday with investigators from the House panel probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The deposition finally came to fruition when the committee formally voted to censure Clark in December,after he and his attorney walked out of a November meeting with the panel. A vote before the full House has been hanging in the balance as Clark has since agreed to plead the Fifth before the committee, but has since twice rescheduled his appearance due to medical issues.

Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said he expects the deposition will last into the afternoon, at which point the panel will weigh whether to move forward with its rebuke.

“We’ve operated in good faith in scheduling him and trying to accommodate him, and we’ll just see what develops,” Thompson told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

Clark, a midlevel attorney at the Justice Department who primarily worked on environmental issues, used his perch to suggest the department forward a letter to several states encouraging them to delay the certification of their 2020 presidential election results.

Trump even mulled installing Clark as acting attorney general as other department officials refused to act on his claims of election fraud — a move that left the department’s top officials threatening to resign.

The committee subpoenaed Clark in October of last year.

But Clark initially sought to rebuff the committee, arguing his conversations with Trump should be covered by attorney client privilege and executive privilege.

However a letter from Trump seeking to restrict access to various former aides on executive privilege grounds did not include Clark, while a July letter from DOJ also gave him the green light to engage with the committee.

The committee’s move to censure Clark – which could result in prosecution by his former employer – pushed him to plead the Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination, a plea that can have serious professional ramifications for attorneys.

11/21

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeffrey-clark-deposition_n_6185b98ce4b06de3eb75685d

(AP) — A former assistant attorney general who aligned himself with former President Donald Trump after he lost the 2020 election has declined to be fully interviewed by a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, ending a deposition after around 90 minutes Friday.

Jeffrey Clark, who championed Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, presented the committee with a letter saying he would not answer questions based on Trump’s assertions of executive privilege, including in an ongoing court case, according to a person familiar with the closed-door meeting who was granted anonymity to discuss it. Clark left the interview with his lawyer, who told reporters that they were heading “home.”

Clark, who was subpoenaed by the committee to appear, would not answer any questions from reporters as he departed.

In a statement Friday evening, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, confirmed that Clark refused to answer questions and said it was unacceptable. He said he had rejected the claims of privilege and said Clark “has a very short time” to reconsider and cooperate.

“It’s astounding that someone who so recently held a position of public trust to uphold the Constitution would now hide behind vague claims of privilege by a former President, refuse to answer questions about an attack on our democracy, and continue an assault on the rule of law,” Thompson said.

Clark’s refusal is just the latest fallout from Trump’s attempt to assert executive privilege in a lawsuit he filed against the committee and the National Archives. The suit aims to block the government from releasing a tranche of internal White House documents, including call logs, drafts of remarks, speeches and handwritten staff notes from before and during the insurrection. President Joe Biden has so far waived executive privilege on nearly all the documents that the committee has asked for, citing the panel’s need to investigate the violent attack.

Amid the legal wrangling, the House panel has struggled to gain cooperation from some of Trump’s other top allies — including his longtime associate Steve Bannon and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — as it conducts a sweeping investigation outside of public view. The committee has so far interviewed more than 150 witnesses so far, according to two people familiar with the interviews who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them.

The interviews have included a broad swath of former and current executive branch officials, Trump campaign aides, law enforcement officials and others. The panel has also talked to several people who helped organize a rally the morning of Jan. 6 where Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”

The committee has also interviewed Justice Department officials who were in office after the election. Thompson said Clark’s “refusal to answer questions about the former President’s attempt to use the Department of Justice to overturn the election is in direct contrast to his supervisors at the Department, who have come in and answered the committee’s questions on these important topics.”

Clark is one of almost 20 people the committee has subpoenaed so far. A report issued by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee last month detailed how he championed Trump’s efforts to undo the election results and clashed as a result with Justice Department superiors who resisted the pressure, culminating in a dramatic White House meeting at which Trump ruminated about elevating Clark to attorney general. He did not do so after several aides threatened to resign.

Thompson wrote in Clark’s subpoena that the committee’s probe “has revealed credible evidence that you attempted to involve the Department of Justice in efforts to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power” and his efforts “risked involving the Department of Justice in actions that lacked evidentiary foundation and threatened to subvert the rule of law.”

It is unclear whether the panel will move to hold Clark in contempt of Congress, as they did with Bannon.Thompson said the committee needs the information Clark is withholding and is willing “to take strong measures” to hold him accountable.

The House voted last month to recommend the charges against Bannon, and it is now up to the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute.

As they voted to hold Bannon in contempt, lawmakers on the panel — including two Republicans — made clear they would fight any assertions of executive privilege, which was developed over the years to protect a president’s private conversations and communications. Thompson said then that the panel “won’t be deterred” by any such claims.

A federal judge hearing the case also appeared to question Trump’s assertions this week, expressing skepticism when Trump’s lawyers argued the House panel did not have a legislative purpose for obtaining the documents.

“The Jan. 6 riot happened in the Capitol,” said U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. “That is literally Congress’ house.”

The House committee could pursue similar contempt charges against Meadows and former Trump administration aides Dan Scavino and Kashyap Patel, who have all been in extended discussions with the committee about testifying after they were subpoenaed.

Despite Trump’s false claims about a stolen election — the primary motivation for the violent mob that broke into the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Biden’s victory — the results were confirmed by state officials and upheld by the courts. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, had said the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the results.

Associated Press journalists Rick Gentilo and Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report.

former DOJ official facing disbarment and criminal referral for taking part in the Trump's 'election subversion scheme’: report

Tom Boggioni Raw Story October 17, 2021

According to a report from theGuardian's Peter Stone, former assistant attorney general and high-ranking Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark is facing the very real threat he will be disbarred and face criminal,.... criminal charges for assisting Donald Trump in his attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

Clark is accused of working hand in hand with the former president in his efforts to compel former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to pressure Georgia election officials to change the vote totals in the state and hand its Electoral College votes to Trump.

Following an eight-month inquiry by congressional investigators, the Senate judiciary committee churned out a damning 394-page report that led committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) to refer it to the DC bar's disciplinary counsel to investigate Clark and discipline him appropriately -- including career-killing disbarment.

That same Senate report has also been submitted to the House select committee investigating the Jan 6th Capitol riot as evidence against Trump.

According to one former DOJ inspector general, the evidence against Clark is both damning and presents a compelling case for criminal charges.

"It's no mystery why Clark is playing hard to get with Congress," Michael Bromwich explained to the Guardian's Stone. "He faces a meaningful threat of criminal liability based on the facts contained in the Senate report."

"The Senate report provides overwhelming evidence that Jeffrey Clark became a witting pawn of Trump's in trying to launch a coup in the justice department, which would then serve as the launching pad for the broader coup whose aim was to overturn the results of the election," he added.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) concurred, telling the Guardian, "Either Jeffrey Clark was an enterprising sycophant looking to score points with a transactional president, or he was a cog in a much larger election-theft scheme. Clark's testimony under oath will be very important to arrive at the full truth, which is why it's very hard to imagine he avoids testifying – either before Congress or a grand jury."

Stone writes, "The Senate report provided new details about the secretive pressure tactics deployed by Trump and Clark to persuade Rosen to accede to their schemes to help nullify Biden's win, even after Trump staunch ally, attorney general William Barr, publicly stated on 1 December that the election results were not marred by fraud that 'could have effected a different outcome in the election'."

You can read more here.

subpoena'd, fired from dark shop kickass

jan. 6 committee issues a scathing subpoena to a Trump official implicated in plot to overturn the election

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

October 13, 2021

The House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has just issued a scathing subpoena to Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump Justice Dept. official accused of scheming with the then-president to overturn the results of....

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/internet-explodes-with-reactions-to-bombshell-senate-judiciary-report-on-trumps-efforts-to-pressure-doj-into-helping-him-overturn-the-election/

ME

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has released a sweeping report detailing how former President Donald Trump and a former high-ranking lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Democratic-led committee's 394-page document contains intricate details about the former president's actions in the days after the presidential election was called for President Joe Biden. A number of bombshell claims were revealed in the report and ⁠— here aresix key takeaways from it.

1. "President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results."

The report reveals Trump asked the Justice Department for assistance in overturning the election a total of nine times. The call history includes details about who Trump spoke with along with dates those calls took place.

2. "White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked Acting Attorney General Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House-DOJ communications about specific law enforcement matters."

Between December 29 and January 1, Meadows pushed for Rosen to open an investigation into "at least four categories of false election fraud claims" being circulated by Trump, his campaign team, legal team and other allies. At the time, no substantial evidence of election fraud had been produced to support any of the claims. The report also breaks down the four key categories Meadows pressed Rosen about:

  • "Investigate various discredited claims of election fraud in Georgia that the Trump campaign was simultaneously advancing in a lawsuit that the Georgia Supreme Court had refused to hear on an expedited basis;
  • Investigate false claims of 'signature match anomalies' in Fulton County, Georgia, even though Republican state elections officials had made clear "there has been no evidence presented of any issues with the signature matching process."
  • Investigate a theory known as 'Italygate,' which was promoted by an ally of the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and which held that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an Italian IT contractor used military satellites to manipulate voting machines and change Trump votes to Biden votes. Meadows also asked DOJ to meet with Giuliani on Italygate and other election fraud claims.
  • Investigate a series of claims of election fraud in New Mexico that had been widely refuted and in some cases rejected by the courts, including a claim that Dominion Voting Systems machines caused late-night 'vote dumps' for Democratic candidates."

The report also notes that Meadows' actions are in violation of policies that place limitations on communication between White House and DOJ officials in regards to certain law enforcement matters. This policy was put in place after the Watergate scandal.

3. "After personally meeting with Trump, Jeffrey Bossert Clark [former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division] pushed Rosen and Donoghue to assist Trump's election subversion scheme — and told Rosen he would decline Trump's potential offer to install him as Acting Attorney General if Rosen agreed to aid that scheme."

After having private conversations with Trump, Clark pressed Rosen and Donoghue to announce an investigation into election fraud and have legislatures in key swing states appoint alternate election officials. The report highlights a draft letter Clark sent to Rosen and Donoghue on December 28. The letter, which was addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), the General Assembly Speaker, and Senate President Pro Tempore, included a number of recommended directives, many of which violated election laws.

In fact, Clark's proposed action, which would have had the DOJ override an already-certified popular vote, was described as "a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority," according to the report:

"The letter was titled "Georgia Proof of Concept" and Clark suggested replicating it in "each relevant state." The letter would have informed state officials that DOJ had "taken notice" of election irregularities in their state and recommended calling a special legislative session to evaluate these irregularities, determine who "won the most legal votes," and consider appointing a new slate of Electors. Clark's proposal to wield DOJ's power to override the already-certified popular vote reflected a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority: DOJ protects ballot access and ballot integrity, but has no role in determining which candidate won a particular election."

4. "Trump allies with links to the 'Stop the Steal' movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ."

The report included a brief list of the Trump allies who have been accused of pressuring DOJ officials to do the former president's bidding. Those individuals also had ties to the former president's "Stop the Steal" movement and the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that followed Trump's rally on January 6.

They are:

5. "Trump forced the resignation of U.S. Attorney Byung Jin ('BJay') Pak, whom he believed was not doing enough to address false claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump then went outside the line of succession when naming an Acting U.S. Attorney, bypassing First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine and instead, appointing Bobby Christine because he believed Christine would 'do something' about his election fraud claims."

When former U.S. Attorney General Pak's investigative results did not align with the outcome Trump was hoping for, the outraged former president publicly berated him and described him as "a "Never Trumper." The former president also bulldozed over protocol and the proper line of succession to appoint someone he believed would produce favorable results to help him overturn the presidential election.

6. "By pursuing false claims of election fraud before votes were certified, DOJ deviated from longstanding practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election."

On November 9, 2020 the former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr released a memo that "directed prosecutors not to wait until after certification to investigate allegations of voting irregularities that 'could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.'"

In doing this, the report emphasizes Barr "weakened" the DOJ's policy to "avoid taking overt steps in election fraud investigations until after votes were certified, in order to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election." His actions before and after the election disregarded the DOJ's longstanding practice.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/reince-priebus-law-firm-expands-north-carolina-2022-01-05/

no lnx

Reince Priebus' law firm expands in North Carolina

By David Thomas

Michael Best & Friedrich adds seven more offices in North Carolina after absorbing Forrest Firm

Wisconsin-based firm has ties to former President Donald Trump

(Reuters) - Milwaukee-based law firm Michael Best & Friedrich on Wednesday said it has acquired a 23-lawyer North Carolina firm, shoring up its presence in the Tar Heel state.

By acquiring Forrest Firm, a full-service business law firm, Michael Best adds seven new North Carolina locations to its established office in Raleigh. The firm said it now has more than 60 lawyers and other employees in the state.

Forrest Firm's practices include corporate transactions, intellectual property, litigation, labor and employment and venture capital, Michael Best said in a press release.

Michael Best is known for its ties to former President Donald Trump. Firm president Reince Priebus served as Trump's White House chief of staff for six months, while Stefan Passantino, a former White House deputy counsel, leads the firm's political law practice.

The firm also has a lobbying arm, Michael Best Strategies. Priebus, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, chairs its board of advisors.

Justin Clark, a former Trump deputy campaign manager who has represented Trump in his bid to block records from being scrutinized by Congress, is a Michael Best partner listed as being on leave from the firm.

Michael Best has launched a string of new offices since 2013, including in Austin, Boulder, Salt Lake City, Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, which opened in 2017. The firm said it added seven attorneys to its Raleigh office last year.

Like other law firms, Michael Best saw its fortunes rise last year, with its gross revenue reaching $156.9 million, according to ALM Media, which tracks law firm finances.

Read more:

Judges dubious toward Trump bid to suppress U.S. Capitol riot records

Justin Clark straddles roles, law firms, as Trump campaign deputy

Milwaukee's Michael Best saw fortunes rise during Trump era

judges dubious toward Trump bid to suppress U.S. Capitol riot records

Justin Clark straddles roles, law firms, as Trump campaign deputy

Milwaukee's Michael Best saw fortunes rise during Trump era

Milwaukee-based Michael Best & Friedrich has gained national prominence and prospered financially as it has brought on a number of former Trump administration officials and re-grown its attorney head count over the last four years.

The firm welcomed back longtime former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus in October 2017, after Priebus’ six-month stint as White House chief of staff. Priebus became president of the law firm and head of its government relations and public affairs unit, Michael Best Strategies.

To read the full story on Westlaw Today, click here: https://bit.ly/3l3c3em

Reuters) - Milwaukee-based Michael Best & Friedrich has gained national prominence and prospered financially as it has brought on a number of former Trump administration officials and re-grown its attorney head count over the last four years.

The firm welcomed back longtime former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus in October 2017, after Priebus' six-month stint as White House chief of staff. Priebus became president of the law firm and head of its government relations and public affairs unit, Michael Best Strategies.

Since then, the firm has added Justin Clark, who once led the White House's public liaison and intergovernmental affairs offices, andStefan Passantino, former White House deputy counsel, as partners, with Passantino leading the firm's political law practice.

Clark is currently on leave, serving as Trump's deputy campaign manager – on Wednesday he was vowing to intervene in vote count litigation in Pennsylvania.

Clark and Passantino also have a separate venture, Elections LLC, that they formed in February 2019. That firm has been paid $560,000 by the Trump campaign for legal consulting, according to Federal Elections Commission records.

Elections LLC has also earned thousands more from individual campaign committees, including Marjorie Taylor Greene's congressional campaign in Georgia and independent political action committees tied to Republicans, FEC records show.

The Trump campaign tapped Passantino for a lawsuit it filed in Chatham County Superior Court in Georgia. In the lawsuit, the campaign and the Georgia Republican Party alleged that the Chatham County Board of Elections commingled a batch of absentee ballots with ballots that had arrived after the deadline for receiving such ballots.

Michael Best itself earned more than $400,000 from the Republican National Committee and some of its state-level affiliates from January 2019 to September 2020, according to FEC records. The firm was involved in the planning of the 2020 RNC Convention.

Passantino declined to comment, and neither Michael Best managing partner David Krutz nor a spokeswoman responded to requests for comment.

The firm's lobbying profile has also grown during the Trump administration. Prior to 2017, the firm's federal lobbying revenues never reached a quarter of a million dollars, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database.

Since then it has been on the rise. This year so far, the firm was paid more than $3.2 million in lobbying fees, its most ever, according to disclosures compiled by OpenSecrets. The firm's top client this year is Plains All American Pipeline, an oil and gas company based in Houston.

Beyond its political work, Michael Best is known for a mix of strong practices in areas such as intellectual property, manufacturing and technology transactions, according to Chicago-based law firm consultant Kent Zimmermann.

The firm was established in 1848, the same year Wisconsin was admitted to the union. In 1990, it opened an office in Chicago, which Zimmermann described as the "turning point" for the firm.

"It's not easy to grow out of some markets, including Milwaukee. But some firms have done it, and they're one of them," Zimmermann, a consultant at the Zeughauser Group, said. "They're not done growing yet."

The firm was bent on expansion before Trump's election in 2016 and has built on that momentum, Zimmermann said. Since 2013, it has opened offices in cities including Washington, D.C., Austin, Boulder and Salt Lake City.

Over the past decade, Michael Best has seen uneven periods of growth in its top-line revenue, according to ALM Media, which tracks law firm finances and demographics. In 2016 and 2017, it grew its gross receipts by 7.4% and 8.86%, respectively, before watching that growth shrink to 1.5% in 2018.

Last year, Michael Best generated revenue of $144.3 million, a firm record, according to ALM.

The firm hit an all-time head count high of 357 attorneys in 2002 before shrinking steadily to 189 attorneys in 2013, per ALM's data. Since 2016 it has seen its longest stretch of head count growth in two decades, adding lawyers every year to reach 242 attorneys in 2019.

"I think they're going to be a firm on the rise after Trump's time in office," Zimmermann said.

References

ALM MEDIA LLC; PLAINS ALL AMERICAN PIPELINE LP

https://www.americanoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/DOJ-19-0160-1.pdf

Charles Smiroldo

FOIA Coordinator

Law and Policy Section

Environment and Natural Resources Division

PO Box 7415

Ben Franklin Station

Washington, DC 20044-7415

FOIARouting.ENRD@usdoj.gov

Re: Freedom of Information Act Request

Dear Mr. Smiroldo:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552, and the implementing

regulations of the Department of Justice (DOJ), 28 C.F.R. Part 16, American Oversight makes the

following request for records.

In October 2018, Jeffrey Bossert Clark—critic of climate change policy and former British

Petroleum attorney—was confirmed to serve as Assistant Attorney General of the Department of

Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD).

1

He replacedJeffrey Wood, a

former coal lobbyist who had run the ENRD as Acting Assistant Attorney General since January

2017,

2

and who now serves as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

American Oversight seeks to shed light on any outside influence exerted on ENRD as well as

DOJ’s efforts to mitigate potential conflicts of interest posed by former employers and clients.

Requested Records

American Oversight requests that DOJ produce the following within twenty business days:

1) All email communications (including email messages, attachments, calendar entries, or

calendar invitations) between (1) Jeffrey Bossert Clark and anyone acting on his behalf—

1

Marianne Lavelle, Senate Confirms BP Oil Spill Lawyer, Climate Policy Foe as Government’s

Top Environmental Attorney, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS, Oct. 11, 2018,

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11102018/oil-spill-lawyer-jeffrey-bossert-clark-confirmed-topenvironment-attorney-climate-change-policy-chamber-commerce. 2

Lee Fang, Donald Trump Puts Coal Lobbyist in Charge of Prosecuting Environmental Crimes,

THE INTERCEPT, Jan. 27, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/01/27/coal-doj-trump/.

DOJ-19-0160 2

such as a Chief of Staff, Executive Assistant, Administrative Assistant, or Scheduler—and

(2) any person representing the entities below:

a. Kirkland & Ellis LLP (@kirkland.com)

b. The Federalist Society (@fedsoc.org)

c. Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (@ahrinet.org)

d. Allstate Insurance Company (@allstate.com)

e. Axiall Corporation (@axiall.com, @westlake.com)

f. BHP Billiton Ltd (@bhp.com)

g. BP America (@bp.com)

h. Caesars Entertainment Operating Company (@caesars.com)

i. Consumers Research (@consumersresearch.org)

j. Dow Chemical Company (@dow.com)

k. Exelon Corporation (@exeloncorp.com)

l. Gavin Power LLC (@gavinpowerccr.com)

m. General Motors (@gm.com)

n. Health Care Service Corporation (@hcsc.com)

o. Hitachi Ltd (@hitachi.us)

p. Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (@mitsubishi-motors.com, @mitsubishicars.com)

q. Syngenta Corporation (@syngenta.com)

r. Blackstone Group (@blackstone.com)

s. Volkswagen Group of America (@volkswagengroupofamerica.com, @vw.com)

t. American Enterprise Institute (@aei.org)

u. Americans for Prosperity (@americansforprosperity.org)

v. American Legislative Exchange Council (@alec.org)

w. Beacon Hill Institute (@beaconhill.org)

x. British Petroleum (@bp.com)

y. Caelus Energy (@caelusenergy.com)

z. Cato Institute (@cato.org)

aa. Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (@cfact.org)

bb. Koch Industries (@kochind.com)

cc. Competitive Enterprise Institute (@cei.org)

dd. Energy and Environmental Legal Institute (@eelegal.org)

ee. The Heartland Institute (@heartland.org)

ff. Heritage Foundation (@heritage.org)

gg. Institute for Energy Research (@instituteforenergyresearch.org)

hh. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (@manhattan-institute.org)

2) All email communications (including email messages, attachments, calendar entries, or

calendar invitations) between (1) Jeffrey Wood and anyone acting on his behalf—such as a

Chief of Staff, Executive Assistant, Administrative Assistant, or Scheduler—and (2) any

person representing the entities below:

a. Balch & Bingham LLP (@balch.com)

b. Southern Company Services, Inc. (@southerncompany.com)

c. Alabama Power Company (@alabamapower.com)

d. AGL Resources Inc. (@aglresources.com)

DOJ-19-0160 3

e. Georgia Power Company (@georgiapower.com)

f. Gulf Power Company (@gulfpower.com)

g. Ingram Barge Company (@ingrambarge.com)

h. Ingram Industries Inc. (@ingrambarge.com)

i. Ingram Marine Group (@ingrambarge.com)

j. Luminant (@luminant.com)

k. Mississippi Power Company (@mississippipower.com)

l. Nuclear Energy Institute (@nei.org)

m. Pine Bluff Materials Co., LLC (@pbmat.com)

n. Pine Bluff Sand & Gravel Company (@pbsgc.com)

o. Regions Bank (@regions.com)

p. Southern NuclearOperating Company, Inc. (@southerncompany.com)

q. Southern Communications Services (@southerncompany.com)

r. Southern Company (@southerncompany.com)

s. Southern Company Holdings, Inc. (@southerncompany.com)

t. Southern Electric Generating Company (@southerncompany.com)

u. Southern Power Company (@southerncompany.com)

v. TXU Energy (@txu.com)

w. Vistra Energy Corp (@vistraenergy.com)

x. American Enterprise Institute (@aei.org)

y. Americans for Prosperity (@americansforprosperity.org)

z. American Legislative Exchange Council (@alec.org)

aa. Beacon Hill Institute (@beaconhill.org)

bb. British Petroleum (@bp.com)

cc. Caelus Energy (@caelusenergy.com)

dd. Cato Institute (@cato.org)

ee. Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (@cfact.org)

ff. Koch Industries (@kochind.com)

gg. Competitive Enterprise Institute (@cei.org)

hh. Energy and Environmental Legal Institute (@eelegal.org)

ii. The Heartland Institute (@heartland.org)

jj. Heritage Foundation (@heritage.org)

kk. Institute for Energy Research (@instituteforenergyresearch.org)

ll. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (@manhattan-institute.org)

3) All email communications (including email messages, attachments, calendar entries, or

calendar invitations) between (1) Jeffrey Wood or anyone acting on his behalf—such as a

Chief of Staff, Executive Assistant, Administrative Assistant, or Scheduler—and (2) any of

the following terms:

a. Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint

b. Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa

c. “Section 105 Clean Air Act”

d. “Southern Company”

e. “Edmund Pettus”

f. “Migratory Bird Treaty Act”

g. “Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act”

DOJ-19-0160 4

h. “Clean Power Plan”

i. CPP

j. “Mercury and Air Toxics Standards”

k. MATS

l. “Cross-State Air Pollution Rule”

m. CSPAR

n. “Birmingham Northern Beltline Project”

o. CERCLA

p. “Nuclear Waste Policy Act”

q. Backfit

r. “Inspections, Tests, Analyses, and Acceptance Criteria”

s. ITAAC

t. “advanced nuclear reactors”

u. Luminant

v. Ameren

4) Any conflicts or ethics waivers or authorizations for Jeffrey Bossert Clark and Jeffrey

Wood, including authorizations pursuant to 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502, as well as records

reflecting any recusal determination made or issued for the individual.

trump town

Jeffrey Bossert Clark

Justice

Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division | Financial Disclosure »

Former Positions Outside Government
Former Compensation Sources
Employment Assets
DescriptionValueIncome
Kirkland & Ellis LLP (law firm)$963,000
Kirkland & Ellis 401(k)
Kirkland & Ellis LLP (law firm) anticipated 401(k) bonus (now received in full subsequent to date of report)$15,001 - $50,000None (or less than $201)
Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Trust iI$15,001 - $50,000$2,501 - $5,000
Vanguard Energy Fund Admiral Shares$15,001 - $50,000$2,501 - $5,000
Vanguard High Yield Corporate Fund Admiral Shares$1,001 - $15,000$201 - $1,000
Vanguard Institutional Index Fund$15,001 - $50,000$2,501 - $5,000
Vanguard Intermediate Term Investment Grade Fund Admiral Shares$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
Vanguard Money Market Fund$250,001 - $500,000$1,001 - $2,500
IRA
Fidelity Select Medical Equipment and Systems Portfolio$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
Franklin Mutual Shares Fund Class A$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
Fidelity Select Semiconductors Portfolio$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
Fidelity Select Air Transportation Portfolio$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
ClearBridge Small Cap Fund Class A$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
FIDELITY MSCI INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INDEX$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
JPMorgan Market Expansion Enhanced Index Fund Class A$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
George Mason Law - May 5, 2016$500
Kirkland & Ellis LLP, anticipated bonus$250,001 - $500,000None (or less than $201)
Other Income/Assets
DescriptionValueIncome
U.S. Cash Account #1 (Am.)$250,001 - $500,000$201 - $1,000
U.S. Cash Account #2 (E)$15,001 - $50,000None (or less than $201)
U.S. Cash Account #3 (BA)$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
US Brokerage Money Market Account (Cash)$50,001 - $100,000None (or less than $201)
U.S. Bank Account (Cash) DC1$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
U.S. Brokerage Account #1
SPDR S&P 500$15,001 - $50,000None (or less than $201)
Fidelity New Markets Income Fund$15,001 - $50,000None (or less than $201)
Fidelity Select Insurance Portfolio$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
Fidelity Balanced Fund$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
U.S. Brokerage Account #2
ISHARES CORE S&P US VALUE ETF$15,001 - $50,000None (or less than $201)
VANGUARD FTSE DEVELOPED MARKETS ETF$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
ISHARES CORE S&P U.S. GROWTH ETF$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
VANGUARD FTSE EMERGING MARKETS ETF$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
ISHARES CORE S&P SMALL CAP ETF$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
ISHARES NATIONAL MUNI BOND ETF$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
ISHARES US TREASURY BOND ETF$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
U.S. Brokerage Account #3
BLACKROCK IMPACT U.S. EQUITY FUND$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
SPDR S&P 500 ETF TRUST$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
VA College America 529 DC1
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 CAPITAL WORLD GROWTH & INCOME - WGI C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 EUROPACIFIC GROWTH - EUPAC CNone (or less than $1,001)None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 THE GROWTH FUND OF AMERICA - GFA C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 WASHINGTON MUTUAL INVESTORS FUND C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGEAMERICA 529 THE BOND FUND OF AMERICA BFA CNone (or less than $1,001)None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 CAPITAL INCOME BUILDER CIB C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
VA College America 529 DC2
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 CAPITAL WORLD GROWTH & INCOME - WGI C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 EUROPACIFIC GROWTH - EUPAC CNone (or less than $1,001)None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 THE GROWTH FUND OF AMERICA - GFA C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 WASHINGTON MUTUAL INVESTORS FUND C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGEAMERICA 529 THE BOND FUND OF AMERICA BFA CNone (or less than $1,001)None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 CAPITAL INCOME BUILDER CIB C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
VA College America 529 DC3
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 CAPITAL WORLD GROWTH & INCOME - WGI C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 EUROPACIFIC GROWTH - EUPAC CNone (or less than $1,001)None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 THE GROWTH FUND OF AMERICA - GFA C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 WASHINGTON MUTUAL INVESTORS FUND C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
COLLEGEAMERICA 529 THE BOND FUND OF AMERICA BFA CNone (or less than $1,001)None (or less than $201)
COLLEGE AMERICA 529 CAPITAL INCOME BUILDER CIB C$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
VA College America 529 DC 4
American Funds College 2027 Fund$1,001 - $15,000$201 - $1,000
Prudential Common StockNone (or less than $1,001)$201 - $1,000
Employment Agreements and Arrangements
Employer or PartyCity, StateStatus and TermsDate
Kirkland & Ellis LLPWashington, D.C., District of ColumbiaThis is the portion of my annual bonus for 2016 that is to be directed into my 401(k). This is pursuant to a standard part of my employment agreement. It will be paid into my 401(k) account on March 31, 2017.Sept. 16, 2005
Kirkland & Ellis LLPWashington, District of ColumbiaI will continue to participate in this defined contribution plan. The plan sponsor will not make further contributions after my separation.Sept. 16, 2005
Kirkland & Ellis LLPWashington, District of ColumbiaBonus for 2017, to be paid before I leave the law firm, per firm policy.June 16, 2017
Liabilities
Creditor NameCreditor TypeAmountRateYear Incurred
MohelaStudent Loan$15,001 - $50,0002.07%1995
EverbankMortgage on Personal Residence$250,001 - $500,0003.8752017
Spouse's Employment Assets
DescriptionValueIncome TypeIncome Amount
Wife's IRA
Fidelity Select Chemicals Portfolio$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)
SPDR S&P 500$1,001 - $15,000None (or less than $201)

Do you know something about Jeffrey Bossert Clark? Send us an email at trump@propublica.org or send a Signal message to 347-244-2134.

no lnx

LinkedIn

Jeffrey Bossert Clark

Former Assistant AAG Environment Division & Acting AAG, Civil Division at U.S. Department of Justice

Washington DC-Baltimore Area500+ connections

Sign in to Connect

U.S. Department of Justice

U.S. Department of Justice

Georgetown University Law Center

Georgetown University Law Center

About

Jeff Clark is the 35th Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Justice Department in its 108-year illustrious history. He leads a contingent of 600+ lawyers and staff to enforce the Nation’s environmental laws and defend federal government decisionmaking. Mr. Clark was sworn in on November 1, 2018.

From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Clark was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Justice Department. While there, he supervised the Appellate Section and the Indian Resources Section. He had extensive involvement during that period on the cases of the Environment Division before the Courts of Appeals, including on several cases of exceptional significance he personally briefed and argued. He has personally appeared in most Courts of Appeals and has filed briefs in every Circuit. He has also had a significant hand in three unanimous or near-unanimous victories for the federal government in three environmental cases in the Supreme Court’s October 2003 term.

Interspersed with his government service, Mr. Clark was a partner at the international law firm of Kirkland and Ellis LLP, where he practiced general appellate litigation, environmental law, and administrative law. Moreover, Mr. Clark has also worked in numerous substantive areas of law, ranging from labor law, to telecommunications, to intellectual property, to bankruptcy, and to products liability.

Mr. Clark is rated "AV" by Martindale-Hubbell ("the highest level of professional excellence").

Activity

Yesterday, over 400 agents from the FBI, Dallas Police Department, DEA, and ATF successfully executed an operation targeting violent criminals in one…

Yesterday, over 400 agents from the FBI, Dallas Police Department, DEA, and ATF successfully executed an operation targeting violent criminals in one…

Liked by Jeffrey Bossert Clark

Grateful and happy to announce that I've joined Venable LLP as a partner in the firm's Environmental and Natural Resources Group. Even more excited…

Grateful and happy to announce that I've joined Venable LLP as a partner in the firm's Environmental and Natural Resources Group. Even more excited…

Liked by Jeffrey Bossert Clark

Yesterday, I received my Juris Doctor with cum laude honors from American University Washington College of Law. When I decided to leave my job in…

Yesterday, I received my Juris Doctor with cum laude honors from American University Washington College of Law. When I decided to leave my job in…

Liked by Jeffrey Bossert Clark

Sign in to see all activity

Experience

U.S. Department of Justice

U.S. Department of Justice

2 years 3 months

Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division

Sep 2020 - Jan 20215 months

Washington DC-Baltimore Area

Assistant Attorney General, Environment & Natural Resources Division

Nov 2018 - Jan 20212 years 3 months

Washington, District Of Columbia

Kirkland & Ellis LLP Graphic

Partner

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Sep 2005 - Oct 201813 years 2 months

Washington D.C. Metro Area

See Summary for a general summary of my practice. In the environmental area, Mr. Clark’s areas of expertise include, as the statutes mentioned above, the Clean Water Act; the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act; the Endangered Species Act; the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act; the Federal Land Policy Management Act; the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act; and the Superfund and RCRA waste disposal statutes.

George Mason University - Antonin Scalia Law School Graphic

Adjunct Law Professor

George Mason University - Antonin Scalia Law School

Jan 2000 - May 20099 years 5 months

Arlington, VA

I taught Law, Science, and Technology, and Environmental Law at GMU Law School.

U.S. Department of Justice Graphic

Deputy Assistant Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

2001 - 20054 years

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Kirkland & Ellis Graphic

Associate

Kirkland & Ellis

Aug 1996 - Aug 20015 years 1 month

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Appellate associate during this period. Worked on numerous Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit cases.

U.S. Courts of Appeals Graphic

Law Clerk, Chambers of Chief Judge Danny Boggs, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

U.S. Courts of Appeals

1995 - 19961 year

Louisville, Kentucky Area

Shea & Gardner Graphic

Summer Associate

Shea & Gardner

Jul 1995 - Aug 19952 months

Washington D.C. Metro Area

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shea_%26_Gardner

I spent the second half of my third and final stint as a summer associate at Shea & Gardner.

Kirkland & Ellis Graphic

Summer Associate

Kirkland & Ellis

May 1995 - Jun 19952 months

Washington D.C. Metro Area

I spent the first half of my third and final summer associate stint at Kirkland.

Arnold & Porter Graphic

Summer Associate

Arnold & Porter

1994 - 1994less than a year

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP Graphic

Summer Associate

Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP

May 1993 - Aug 19934 months

Wilmington, DE

Worked on litigation and transactional matters including in the Court of Chancery.

State of Delaware

Tax Policy Analyst at Division of Revenue

State of Delaware

1990 - Aug 19922 years

Produced studies of various Delaware state taxes and provided advice to the Governor's Office and the Legislature on tax policy.

Education

Georgetown University Law Center

Georgetown University Law Center

J.D.

1992 - 1995

Activities and Societies: Georgetown Law Journal (Articles Editor)

University of DelawareUniversity of Delaware Graphic

University of Delaware

M.A. (Urban Affairs and Public Policy)Biden School of Public Policy and Administration

1991 - 1992

Harvard UniversityHarvard University Graphic

Harvard University

A.B.Economics & History

1985 - 1989

Activities and Societies: Parliamentary Debate Team, Harvard Crimson (newspaper, Editorial Page Editor), College Republicans

Father Judge High SchoolFather Judge High School Graphic

Father Judge High School

H.S. Diploma

1981 - 1985

Activities and Societies: Debate Team (President), Newspaper (Features Page Editor), Yearbook, Chess Team (Captain)

St. Leo Elementary School

St. Leo Elementary School

K-8

1973 - 1981

Honors & Awards

National Association of Distinguished Counsel

https://www.distinguishedcounsel.org/

May 2016

Jeffrey Clark, of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, has been selected to the 2016 list as a member of the Nation’s Top One Percent by the National Association of Distinguished Counsel. NADC is an organization dedicated to promoting the highest standards of legal excellence. Its mission is to objectively recognize the attorneys who elevate the standards of the Bar and provide a benchmark for other lawyers to emulate.

Members are thoroughly vetted by a research team, selected by a blue ribbon panel of…

Show more

Super Lawyers

superlawyers.com

2014, 2015, and 2016

Groups

ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Discussion GroupABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Discussion Group Graphic

ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Discussion Group

-

Environmental Health & Safety Professionals (50,000 members+)Environmental Health & Safety Professionals (50,000 members+) Graphic

Environmental Health & Safety Professionals (50,000 members+)

-

Harvard University AlumniHarvard University Alumni Graphic

Harvard University Alumni

-

IvyLife — The #1 Network For Ivy League ProfessionalsIvyLife — The #1 Network For Ivy League Professionals Graphic

IvyLife — The #1 Network For Ivy League Professionals

-

Legal and Policy Issues in Homeland & National SecurityLegal and Policy Issues in Homeland & National Security Graphic

Legal and Policy Issues in Homeland & National Security

-

Bring Back the Meritocracy!Bring Back the Meritocracy! Graphic

Bring Back the Meritocracy!

-

Show 8 more groups

Recommendations received

“I have known Jeff for over twenty years. He has a keen analytical mind and was a tremendous asset to our law school class. ”

1 person has recommended Jeffrey Bossert

View Jeffrey Bossert’s full profile

See who you know in common

Get introduced

Contact Jeffrey Bossert directly

People also viewed

Steve Bradbury

Former Acting Secretary of Transportation and General Counsel at U.S. Department of Transportation

Washington, DC

Jim Touhey

Director, Torts Branch, Civil Division at U.S. Department of Justice

Washington, DC

Trent McCotter

Former Deputy Associate Attorney General at U.S. Department of Justice

Washington, DC

Nathan Mitchell

Partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Washington DC-Baltimore Area

James Rubin

Partner at Dorsey & Whitney LLP

Washington, DC

Christopher Benson

Assistant Director at U.S. Department of Justice

Arlington, VA

Patrick Davis

Former Deputy Associate Attorney General at U.S. Department of Justice

Bethesda, MD

William Lane

Former Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General - Civil Division at U.S. Department of Justice

Alexandria, VA

Karen Harned

Executive Director, Small Business Legal Center at National Federation of Independent Business

Washington, DC

Damon S.

Partner at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP

New York, NY

any kirkland clients?

https://www.citizen.org/article/biden-doj-ditches-trump-coup-accomplices-polluter-protections/

2/21

Biden DOJ ditches Trump coup accomplice’s polluter protections

:{:{

}:}:

By Rick Claypool

Under Trump, environmental crime enforcement plummeted to its lowest level in decades.

Despite the “law and order” rhetoric, Trump’s Justice Department made leniency with corporate lawbreakers a policy priority – even as it ramped up prosecutions of immigrants and low-level offenders.

The president may have insisted his administration was “tough on crime,” but it was clear to anyone paying attention that when it came to prosecuting the powerful, Trump’s DOJ was willing to look the other way.

Corporate enforcement fell by at least 90% at the DOJ and EPA, according to Public Citizen research, and the administration oversaw a 70% decrease in Clean Water Act prosecutions and a 50% decrease in Clean Air Act prosecutions.

The Biden administration’s speedy withdrawal of some of the Trump’s DOJ’s worst polluter protection policies is a sign things may be about to change.

The urgency was merited. Trump’s Justice Department appointees were still trying to lock in the policies that resulted in record-low polluter prosecutions in the final weeks of his administration.

Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark, until recently the leader of the DOJ’s civil and environmental divisions, dropped an “Enforcement Principles and Priorities” memo less than a week before Biden’s inauguration.

An explosive New York Times report reveals that Clark conspired with President Trump in his attempt to overturn the election. Clark’s qualifications for running the Trump’s DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resource Division include experience defending BP from lawsuits stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster and representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in lawsuits against regulating carbon emissions.

Under Trump, criminal referrals from the Environmental Protection Agency and the DOJ’s environmental prosecutions plummeted to their lowest levels in decades. Clark’s last-minute memo attempts to lock in this trend.

The memo mostly describes how the DOJ’s environmental division is applying government-wide policies that have led to the precipitous decline in corporate prosecutions across the board. In 2018, federal prosecutions of corporations fell to just 99, the lowest number since the U.S. Sentencing Commission started tracking the data in 1996. The decline is partly explained by prosecutors’ increasing practice of resolving investigations into corporate criminals – including serious repeat offenders – with leniency agreements (deferred and non-prosecution agreements) that protect corporate defendants from prosecution.

Some of the more notorious recipients of the DOJ’s leniency agreements are egregious violators whose crimes result in mass deaths, such as Massey Energy, whose safety violations resulted in an explosion that killed 29 workers in its Upper Big Branch Mine,General Motors, whose defective ignition switches and subsequent coverup of the flaw caused or contributed to the deaths of 124 people, and Boeing, whose 737 Max defects caused the crashes Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, killing 346. The Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes is an ongoing insult and injustice to the victims of corporate crime and their families.

Perhaps the most shocking part of Clark’s memo is its instruction to prosecutors to apply a heightened “mens rea” (or “guilty mind”) standard to environmental crimes. The memo tells prosecutors, “those offenses that do not involve intentional, knowing, or willful wrongdoing may be more appropriate for administrative enforcement or compliance assistance than for judicial enforcement.” Clark is saying that environmental cases that do not include a willful intent to break the law generally should not be criminally prosecuted.

Changing mens rea standards to make it harder to prosecute corporate criminals has long been a priority for the infamous billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch (the latter of which died in 2019). The Kochs became interested in the issue following the 2001 conviction of Koch Petroleum Group for Clean Air Act violations and false statements and unsuccessfully sought to change the standard through legislation.

The problem is, corporations accused of environmental crimes can often claim they did not intend to break the law, and executives who should be responsible for knowing what the business they oversee are up toinstead delegate signing off on activities to managers further down on the corporate hierarchy. If they use the structure of the corporation to shield headquarters from knowing what subsidiaries are up to, they can always just say, “Oops, sorry!”For obvious reasons, this enables, rather than deters, corporate crime. This is why applying a heightened mens rea standard to regulatory crimes significantly undermines corporate crime enforcement.

It also means, despite the “ignorance of the law is no defense” adage, that corporations and executives can protect themselves from prosecution by claiming the wrongdoing they are accused of committing occurred without knowledge that it was illegal.Allowing this ignorance defense – a defense not available to ordinary defendants – gives executives the incentive to learn as little as possible about their legal obligations, including the ways that they are required to protect public health and the environment from the harmful effects of pollution.

As it is, corporations can be structured so that risky activities are concentrated in subsidiaries in order to protect the parent corporation from liability for wrongdoing. As a result, the Justice Department often brings the most serious criminal charges against corporate subsidiaries because parent companies are unaware of what is happening within their subsidiaries. Clark would make it even more difficult to prosecute parent companies by requiring them to know both what is happening in their subsidiaries and that the underlying conduct was illegal,instructing prosecutors to “pay due respect the corporate form, and of distinctions between separate entities held by a larger corporation,” which, Clark notes, are purposely designed to “allow investors and owners to limit their liability.”

Giving corporations an incentive to weaken internal oversight so that they can remain intentionally ignorant of how parts of the business may be breaking rules that protect the environment and the public is the exact opposite of what the U.S. government’s top law enforcement agency should be doing.

Thankfully, Clark and Trump’s last-minute gift to corporate polluters was short lived. The Trump policies at the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) that the Biden memo withdraws include:

This policy change is a necessary and vital first step forward, but not sufficient on its own. Biden’s DOJ should replace the Trump-era policies with new ones that reflect the administration’s stated goal of holding polluters accountable.

The real test will be whether we see eventual prosecutions of corporate criminals and executives that break the law by poisoning Americans’ air, water, and environment. Strong enforcement not only will hold wrongdoers accountable, it will deter lawbreaking in the first place, protecting Americans and our planet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark

Jeffrey Bossert Clark (born April 17, 1967)[2] is an American lawyer who served as Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division from 2018 to 2021. Clark resigned on January 14, 2021 after controversy over his role regarding the disputed results of the2020 U.S. Presidential Election.[3]

Early life[

Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was on the parliamentary debate team at Harvard College, where he graduated with an A.B. in economics and history in 1989. He received a M.A. in urban affairs and public policy from the School of Public Policy & Administration at the University of Delaware in 1993; and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1995.[2]

Career[

After graduating from law school, Clark clerked for Judge Danny J. Boggs of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Clark joined Kirkland & Ellis as a lawyer in 1996. He has been with the firm since then, excepting a period of service from 2001 to 2005 in the George W. Bush administration as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Justice Department.[4] At Kirkland & Ellis, Clark represented the United States Chamber of Commerce in lawsuits challenging the federal government's authority to regulate carbon emissions and the Environmental Protection Agency's "endangerment finding".[5] From 2012 to 2015, he was a member of the governing council of the American Bar Association's Administrative Law Section.[2] He is also a member of the Federalist Society.[6]

In June 2017, Clark was nominated by President Donald Trump to become the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division.[7] He was confirmed by the Senate on October 11, 2018.[8] Within the division, Clark "developed a reputation for pushing aggressive conservative legal principles and taking a hands-on approach that drew kudos from some colleagues but often frustrated career lawyers on his team."[9]

In September 2020 he was also appointed acting head of the Justice Department's civil division with the support of acting Attorney General, Jeffrey A. Rosen.[10][6] Upon becoming the acting head of the civil division, Clark attempted unsuccessfully to include the government in a lawsuits concerning defamation against President Trump by a plaintiff accusing Trump of rape and against a former friend of First Lady Melania Trump.[6]

Views on regulating greenhouse gases[

Clark has opposed regulation of greenhouse gases.[11] He has characterized US efforts to regulate greenhouse gases as “reminiscent of kind of a Leninistic program from the 1920s to seize control of the commanding heights of the economy.”[12][13] Regarding the 2010 EPA finding on greenhouse gas emissions, Clark wrote in a blog:

When did America risk coming to be ruled by foreign scientists and apparatchiks at the United Nations? The answer, it would seem, is ever since Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Obama, chose to issue a rule determining that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare.

— Jeffrey Clark[14]

Attempts to overturn results of 2020 presidential election[

Main article: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election

Dissatisfied that the Justice Department disagreed with his allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, President Trump allegedly discussed a plan to replace the acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Clark. Trump expected Clark would then reverse the decisions of previous Attorneys General and open an investigation Georgia election whose results would compel officials to void Biden's win in that state.[10][15] Rosen and his predecessor, William Barr, had previously resisted pressure from Trump to interfere.

Clark allegedly told Rosen and other top Justice Department officials that the Department should announce it was investigating serious election fraud issues; Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue rejected the suggestion, as the Department had previously determined and announced that there was no significant fraud.[16] Rosen and Donoghue were unaware that Clark had met with Trump. Clark later told Rosen that Trump intended to appoint him to replace Rosen. The Department's remaining senior leaders – including Rosen, Donoghue, and Assistant Attorney General for theOffice of Legal Counsel Steven Engel – agreed they would all resign if Rosen was removed. After Rosen and Clark presented their arguments to Trump in a White House meeting, the president declined to pursue the option.[10][15]

Clark was reportedly introduced to Trump by U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania Scott Perry.[17] Clark denied that he had plotted to replace Rosen, who had mentored Clark when both worked at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, or that he recommended any action based on inaccurate material. He added that he could not discuss any conversations he had with Trump or with Justice Department lawyers because of legal privilege. Clark further noted that he had been the lead signatory on the Justice Department's letter opposing a claim that Vice President**Mike Pence**had the power to reject electoral votes for Biden when Congress met to certify the result.[10]

Clark's alleged cooperation with Trump to remove Rosen and to use the Justice Department's power to alter Georgia's election results was met with surprise by many of Clark's friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, who had previously viewed him as an "establishment lawyer" rather than a part of the "Trumpist faction of the party."[6]

Clark resigned from the Justice Department on January 14, 2021.[3]

On January 25, 2021, the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General, Michael E. Horowitz, launched "an investigation into whether any former or current DOJ official engaged in an improper attempt to have DOJ seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election."[18][19]

References[

  1. ^ Gilmer, Ellen M. (January 21, 2021). "Career Lawyer to Temporarily Lead DOJ Environment Division". Bloomberg Law. Retrieved May 28, 2021.
  2. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-Justice.gov_2-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-Justice.gov_2-2) "Jeffrey Bossert Clark". Justice.gov. U.S. Department of Justice. November 19, 2018.
  3. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-Eenews_3-1) King, Pamela; Jacobs, Jeremy P. (January 26, 2021). "Law: Who is Jeffrey Bossert Clark?". Eenews.net. Retrieved January 30, 2021.
  4. ^ Schneier, Cogan (June 6, 2017). "Trump Announces Slate of Big Law Nominees for DOJ, Agency Posts". The National Law Journal. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
  5. ^ Lavelle, Marianne; Cushman, John H. (June 6, 2017). "Trump Names BP Oil Spill Lawyer, Climate Policy Foe as Top DOJ Environment Attorney". InsideClimate News. Retrieved September 19, 2017.
  6. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-Unassuming_6-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-Unassuming_6-2) d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-Unassuming_6-3) Benner, Katie; Savage, Charlie (January 25, 2021). "Jeffrey Clark Was Considered Unassuming. Then He Plotted With Trump". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 25, 2021.
  7. ^ "President Donald J. Trump Announces Key Additions to his Administration". whitehouse.gov (Press release). June 6, 2017. Retrieved June 21, 2017 – via National Archives.
  8. ^ Cama, Timothy (October 11, 2018). "Senate confirms climate skeptic to head DOJ environment office". The Hill. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  9. ^ Gilmer, Ellen M. (January 19, 2021). "Divisive Top Trump Environment Lawyer Reviews 'Challenging Job:{':(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". Bloomberg Law. Retrieved January 25, 2021.
  10. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-NYT2021-01-22_10-1) c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-NYT2021-01-22_10-2) d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-NYT2021-01-22_10-3) Benner, Katie (January 23, 2021). "Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General". The New York Times.
  11. ^ "Clark is unfit to lead the Department of Justice's Environmental and Natural Resources Division" (Press release). Sierra Club. June 28, 2017. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  12. ^ *EPA: An Agency Gone Wild or Just Doing Its Job?* (embedded video). Federalist Society. November 20, 2010. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  13. ^ Lavelle, Marianne (October 11, 2018). "Senate Confirms BP Oil Spill Lawyer, Climate Policy Foe as Government's Top Environment Attorney". InsideClimate News. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  14. ^ Clark, Jeffrey Bossert (April 28, 2010). "Can the EPA Rely on UN Science?". PJ Media. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  15. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bossert_Clark#cite_ref-WAPO2021-01-22_15-1) Zapotosky, Matt; Barrett, Devlin; Leonnig, Carol D. (January 23, 2021). "Trump entertained plan to install an attorney general who would help him pursue baseless election fraud claims". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
  16. ^ Balsamo, Mike (December 1, 2020). "Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud". AP NEWS.
  17. ^ Benner, Katie; Edmondson, Catie (January 24, 2021). "Pennsylvania Lawmaker Played Key Role in Trump's Plot to Oust Acting Attorney General". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
  18. ^ Benner, Katie (January 25, 2021). "The Justice Dept.'s inspector general opens an investigation into any efforts to overturn the election". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 30, 2021.
  19. ^ Schneider, Jessica; Cole, Devan (January 25, 2021). "Justice Department watchdog investigating possible attempt to overturn election results". CNN. Retrieved January 26, 2021.

External links[

Legal officesLegal officesLegal offices

Preceded by

John C. Cruden

United States Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division

2018–present

Incumbent

Categories: 

https://www.eenews.net/articles/trumps-top-environment-lawyer-dont-chain-me-to-a-desk/

3/19

jeffrey Bossert Clark is as comfortable in the courtroom as he is behind his desk at Justice Department headquarters.

The longtime litigator recently took the helm of DOJ’s environment team, leading some 600 attorneys and staff who enforce the nation’s anti-pollution laws. But rather than being swallowed by the heavy management demands of the Environment and Natural Resources Division, Clark likes to jump in the trenches and argue cases himself.

Two weeks ago, he stood before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to defend the Trump administration’s decision to scrap an Obama-era plan for stricter hardrock mining cleanup standards.

clark worked to fend off environmentalists’ claims that EPA’s retreat from the proposal violated the federal Superfund law. Then he carefully navigated a minefield of questions from judges wanting answers for the agency’s decades of inaction on a key provision of the law.

And he did it all on a bum foot, which he fractured in November and had surgery on earlier this year.

"Well, it’s the only argument I’ve ever done on a broken foot, so hopefully, it’ll be the last argument I ever do on a broken foot," Clark recalled during an interview last week. "But it wasn’t so bad."

The new assistant attorney general has been on the job just a few months since securing Senate approval in October, more than a year after his June 2017 nomination. He also worked as a high-ranking official in the division during the George W. Bush administration.

In June, Clark will head back into the courtroom to argue the high-profile appeal in the so-called kids’ climate case in Portland, Ore. He considers his hands-on style — and that of Trump-appointed deputies Eric Grant and Jonathan Brightbill — an important feature of his leadership at DOJ’s environment division.

Asked about his top priorities for the team, Clark is quick to answer: defending President Trump’s agenda. That includes litigation on regulatory rollbacks, environmental enforcement and efforts to secure land for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Environmentalists battled Clark’s appointment, pointing to the former Kirkland & Ellis LLP lawyer’s work representing BP PLC after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and his public criticism of the Obama administration’s landmark legal finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health.

Clark brushes off his detractors: "They don’t necessarily have a very developed sense of how the Justice Department works." And he’s eager to focus on his biggest accomplishments so far, which include reaching a major federal settlement worth more than $500 million with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles for alleged cheating on auto emissions tests.

Clark sat down with E&E News last week to discuss his leadership style, the Trump administration’s litigation record and his views on the endangerment finding.

You had such a long confirmation process. What was that like being in limbo for so long?

There was some frustration in it, obviously, but you can’t dwell on the rear view. What’s in the past is in the past. … I was fully employed, so it wasn’t like I was kind of sitting around just waiting, which would have made it more frustrating. It wasn’t an optimal experience, but it’s done. It’s good to be here. I enjoyed my time here before, and it’s been great to get back to it.

How have things changed between now and your first go-around at the division [from 2001 to 2005]?

I was the deputy who had the Appellate Section and the Indian Resources Section, so I did not do a lot of management activities. I focused more on the legal issues that the division faced in those two areas. For the appellate stuff, that means virtually everything the division is doing. There is still exactly that deputy position as one of my deputies, so that really hasn’t changed at all. And a lot of the personnel in the Appellate Section are exactly the same: same section chief in Appellate as there was before, two out of three of the same assistant-level chiefs. Then in the Indian Resources Section, same chief.

There’s a lot of continuity here because of this being one of the best places in the federal government to work. People come, and a lot of them stay for their whole careers. I’ve been authorizing redwood plaques for people [to recognize distinguished employees], and so they tend to go to people that have been here a long time — three decades, four decades. It’s really amazing. There’s a lot of continuity.

Do you have a good relationship with the career staff?

I think so, yeah. I think different people have different styles, and so my style is to be focused on being hands-on and being an active litigator still, which is one reason why you saw me do that argument [at the D.C. Circuit]. I’m going to do other arguments. I get into the guts of briefs — from things small, like missing quotation marks, to things medium and large — I edit things up. I’m not just in a pure managerial mode, and that’s the way I like it. It’s one reason why, in terms of other things that you could do in the federal government in a new administration, I was particularly interested in coming back to the Justice Department.

What are your big priorities for the division?

The biggest one is defending the administration’s agenda in the courts. There are a lot of new rulemakings that are slated to come out, and so participating in those and preparing for the legal challenges to those. Then, of course, continued active enforcement. You were here for the Fiat Chrysler announcement, right, which garnered more than a half-billion dollars of recovery for the United States, in one form or another? I mean, that’s huge.

I think that there might be other cases like that — not talking about any specifics — that are on the horizon. We’ve had cases in a number of different areas that have been very successful in the enforcement realm. On some of them, they’re really novel or they’re record-breaking in terms of what they’re accomplishing. Those are the main two areas.

There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes with the agencies on these things, because they’re just incredibly complex. So sometimes I have to interface with other parts of the department. Sometimes they’re not used to the level of complexity of some of the things we do. It can be mind-boggling. But if you’ve spent a lot of time working on cases like this, they become second nature.

The budget proposal included a boost for the environment section on border wall issues. Is that a big part of your portfolio?

So we’re working jointly with the Civil Division on that. There are environmental challenges to the border wall going on. But there are defenses to that that go to waivers and a statute called [the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act]. So it’s natural for the Civil Division to have the lead on those, because they primarily involve areas that are in their internal delegation, but we’re working with them jointly on it. And as to acquisition projects for land that relate to putting the border wall up, we’re the part of the federal government that is the central housing of the machinery to exercise the power of eminent domain, so we’re working on it from that standpoint, too.

I think we’re up to a half-dozen lawsuits at this point. Some of them involve environmental claims; many of them don’t. Some of them involve states or general organizations making challenges, some of them in far-flung places, as opposed to the courts where the geography of the wall is. The issue there is that not all of the cases involve particular acquisition projects or landowners who fear their particular parcels might be taken. There’s a lot of general challenges based on the idea that the president needed Congress’ authorization to specifically use the money for that purpose.

What made you decide to argue Juliana v. United States, the high-stakes kids’ climate case at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals?

It is high-profile, and it’s important to the law and to the administration because clearly it was an important case in the prior administration. It was filed in the last administration; it wasn’t filed in this administration. I don’t want to get into any real details about it because of the fact that it’s pending, but what I will say to you, and you can read our briefs, look at the injunction pending appeal relief that was sought by them, right? [The motion seeks to block federal permitting for fossil fuel development.] It’s incredibly broad. You don’t run across a lot of cases where someone is asking for that much relief, where they have sued as many Cabinet agencies as they’ve sued, so that’s a highly unusual case. It’s an obvious candidate to be taken on at a higher level. … I like to get in and get my hands dirty.

And that’s just a style preference depending on who’s in your seat, right? Some other division chiefs didn’t go to court very often.

That’s right. It is a style thing. It depends on what skill set you have. Some people have intense management backgrounds, and they’re poring over spreadsheets. Which is not to say I’m not looking at spreadsheets, too; it’s part of the job. But I’m more inclined to be poring over what the third Roman numeral in a red [response] brief to be filed in the Court of Appeals is saying.

The Environment and Natural Resources Division informed staff last year about plans to close the division’s office in San Francisco. Any updates on those plans?

I’m looking at the data about that and then trying to process that. There was obviously a lot of work done on that before I arrived. I can’t say it’s reached any kind of final conclusion. What’s clear is that if the office did need to move, because obviously San Francisco is a very expensive place to have an office, is that any employees … we would help them with their relocation expenses, whether it’s to Denver or D.C., if they wanted to stay within the ENRD family.

Part of your role involves policy priorities that are unique to the Trump administration, but in many other areas, you’re picking up where your Obama-era predecessors left off. How do you respond to your critics in the environmental community who were so concerned about your influence on both areas?

They don’t necessarily have a very developed sense of how the Justice Department works. When I got here in 2001, a lot of what I was doing for the first six months to a year … was defend Clinton administration decisions, which the Bush administration had decided to leave in place. For any administration, when they change from one party to the other, things fall into the category of things that they move quickly to reverse, things that they quickly determine were decided correctly, and then a sort of middle zone where they think about: Is this something that it makes sense to change? Or, on balance, even though we wouldn’t have done it this way, shouldn’t be changed?

I think that maybe the environmental groups who did launch some criticisms like that didn’t understand the role of an advocate and the institutional nature of the Justice Department. It’s not like everything can change on a dime — or that I’d either want everything to change on a dime, that I could make everything change on a dime. In any event, for the vast majority of cases, I’m not the decisionmaker. The agencies and the policymakers at those agencies are making the decisions, and then the issue is, I will defend them as long as they’re consistent with the Constitution and statutes and don’t otherwise pose any issues of illegality.

Have your views changed on the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases?

As far as I know, EPA is not looking again at that issue, but I certainly wouldn’t want to tie their hands if they did decide to look at the issue, so I would decline that question for the same reason that I declined it at the confirmation hearing, which is that my personal views on that are not relevant to my job. What the agency decides to do will drive what litigation positions we would take — again, as long as it’s consistent with the law.

I don’t want to make it sound like we’re just a sort of reflexive mirror of what they do. Behind the scenes, there are, believe it or not, sometimes there are proposals made that have legal problems, so one needs to explain what the legal constraints are to the policy people. But if they do make a decision and it is consistent with law, even if it might not have been the decision that I would have made, my duty is to defend it.

A lot of the Trump administration’s early legal defeats on regulatory issues were before your time. Do you anticipate a better record for the next round of regulatory decisions as they’re defended in the courtroom?

I’d like to hope that my involvement can help improve the quality of the defense, but at the end of the day, here at the Justice Department, we are advocates, and it’s the Article III judges who make the decisions. So you can do the best possible job, and if the judges disagree with you, then as every litigator knows, you’re going to have your fair share of losses. So I can’t tell you exactly which ones we’re going to win and which ones we’re going to lose. But I can tell you that we have a special focus on trying to win as many as we can and that that consumes a lot of hours of my day, and I’m committed to improving the record in that department.

cNN Two federal employees are calling for an investigation into the hiring of a senior Justice Department official who had been interviewed by a manager who resigned shortly after -- and just days before President Joe Biden's inauguration.

The anonymous whistleblowers accuse Jeffrey Bossert Clark of conducting a bogus interview process for the assistant director of the Civil Division and appointing an inexperienced attorney days before his own departure. Clark had resigned on January 14 from his Trump-appointed position as the assistant attorney general of the Environment and Natural Resources Division and acting assistant attorney general of the Civil Division.

NPRfirst reported on the letter that was emailed to members of Congress and the Justice Department's inspector general.

According to the five-page letter, the employees claim Clark appointed an attorney who "volunteered and was part of the DOJ litigation team defending a controversial Trump administration policy ... that barred pregnant, unaccompanied minors in federal immigration custody from obtaining abortions." The policy was later declared unconstitutional.

Clark defended the appointment in an email to CNN on Wednesday.

"Civil Division managers sent me three candidates to interview, each of whom they rated well-qualified. I interviewed all three using the same process I had used for other positions. I think it's very unfortunate that the disappointed applicants would attack their own colleague's selection," he said. "That candidate had strong leadership qualities and was the best qualified. Pointing to that lawyer's work on the Garza litigation, with a D.C. Circuit decision that came out years before I joined the Civil Division, is just a baseless attempt to cast aspersions."

The whistleblowers, though, called Clark's involvement in the hiring process was "unusual."

"More notably, his interviews of the two unsuccessful finalists were perfunctory. Each was interviewed for a grand total of 15 minutes -- Mr. Clark used a timer and was not particularly engaged," wrote David Seide, a senior counsel at the Government Accountability Project, who represents the whistleblowers.

Seide told CNN on Wednesday that the call for the House and Senate to investigate isn't about the employee Clark hired. "It has more to do with an abuse of the process by Clark," he said.

The employee was not named in the letter.

Seide urged lawmakers to "take prompt action" by holding a hearing and called for the Justice Department to reopen the position and restart the interviewing process.

Dena Iverson, the principal deputy director for the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs, declined to comment to CNN. Stephanie Logan, a spokeswoman for DOJ's Office of Inspector General, also declined to comment.

Days after Clark's resignation, The New York Times reported that he had discussed with former President Donald Trump removing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, replacing him and using his powers to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden win.

"Like other instances of misconduct by departing Trump administration officials, these abuses of authority are disturbing," Seide wrote in the letter. "Mr. Clark's last-minute politicization of the DOJ hiring process and issuance of policy memoranda -- capped by his willingness to participate in what was close to an attempted coup d'état -- demands immediate, close and transparent oversight and investigations."

===

Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General

Trying to find another avenue to push his baseless election claims, Donald Trump considered installing a loyalist.

Published Jan. 22, 2021Updated June 15, 2021

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.

The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.

The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?

The answer was unanimous. They would resign.

Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.

The previously unknown chapter was the culmination of the president’s long-running effort to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda. He also pressed Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels, including one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election equipment that Mr. Trump’s allies had falsely said was working with Venezuela to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

This account of the department’s final days under Mr. Trump’s leadership is based on interviews with four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.

Mr. Clark said that this account contained inaccuracies but did not specify, adding that he could not discuss any conversations with Mr. Trump or Justice Department lawyers because of “the strictures of legal privilege.” “Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he said. “All my official communications were consistent with law.”

Mr. Clark categorically denied that he devised any plan to oust Mr. Rosen, or to formulate recommendations for action based on factual inaccuracies gleaned from the internet. “My practice is to rely on sworn testimony to assess disputed factual claims,” Mr. Clark said. “There was a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president. It is unfortunate that those who were part of a privileged legal conversation would comment in public about such internal deliberations, while also distorting any discussions.”

Mr. Clark also noted that he was the lead signatory on a Justice Department request last month asking a federal judge to reject a lawsuit that sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Trump declined to comment. An adviser said that Mr. Trump has consistently argued that the justice system should investigate “rampant election fraud that has plagued our system for years.”

The adviser added that “any assertion to the contrary is false and being driven by those who wish to keep the system broken.” Mr. Clark agreed and said that “legal privileges” prevented him from divulging specifics regarding the conversation.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did Mr. Rosen.

When Mr. Trump said on Dec. 14 that Attorney General William P. Barr was leaving the department, some officials thought that he might allow Mr. Rosen a short reprieve before pressing him about voter fraud. After all, Mr. Barr would be around for another week.

Instead, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Rosen to the Oval Office the next day. He wanted the Justice Department to file legal briefs supporting his allies’ lawsuits seeking to overturn his election loss. And he urged Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate not only unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud, but also Dominion, the voting machines firm.

(Dominion has sued the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who inserted those accusations into four federal lawsuits about voter irregularities that were all dismissed.)

Mr. Rosen refused. He maintained that he would make decisions based on the facts and the law, and he reiterated what Mr. Barr had privately told Mr. Trump: The department had investigated voting irregularities and found no evidence of widespread fraud.

But Mr. Trump continued to press Mr. Rosen after the meeting — in phone calls and in person. He repeatedly said that he did not understand why the Justice Department had not found evidence that supported conspiracy theories about the election that some of his personal lawyers had espoused. He declared that the department was not fighting hard enough for him.

As Mr. Rosen and the deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, pushed back, they were unaware that Mr. Clark had been introduced to Mr. Trump by a Pennsylvania politician and had told the president that he agreed that fraud had affected the election results.

Image

mr Trump quickly embraced Mr. Clark, who had been appointed the acting head of the civil division in September and was also the head of the department’s environmental and natural resources division.

As December wore on, Mr. Clark mentioned to Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue that he spent a lot of time reading on the internet — a comment that alarmed them because they inferred that he believed the unfounded conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump had won the election. Mr. Clark also told them that he wanted the department to hold a news conference announcing that it was investigating serious accusations of election fraud. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue rejected the proposal.

As Mr. Trump focused increasingly on Georgia, a state he lost narrowly to Mr. Biden, he complained to Justice Department leaders that the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Byung J. Pak, was not trying to find evidence for false election claims pushed by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others. Mr. Donoghue warned Mr. Pak that the president was now fixated on his office, and that it might not be tenable for him to continue to lead it, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

That conversation and Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him votes compelled Mr. Pak to abruptly resign this month.

Mr. Clark was also focused on Georgia. He drafted a letter that he wanted Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators that wrongly said that the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in their state, and that they should move to void Mr. Biden’s win there.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue again rejected Mr. Clark’s proposal.

On New Year’s Eve, the trio met to discuss Mr. Clark’s refusal to hew to the department’s conclusion that the election results were valid. Mr. Donoghue flatly told Mr. Clark that what he was doing was wrong. The next day, Mr. Clark told Mr. Rosen — who had mentored him while they worked together at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis — that he was going to discuss his strategy with the president early the next week, just before Congress was set to certify Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.

Unbeknown to the acting attorney general, Mr. Clark’s timeline moved up. He met with Mr. Trump over the weekend, then informed Mr. Rosen midday on Sunday that the president intended to replace him with Mr. Clark, who could then try to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. He said that Mr. Rosen could stay on as his deputy attorney general, leaving Mr. Rosen speechless.

Unwilling to step down without a fight, Mr. Rosen said that he needed to hear straight from Mr. Trump and worked with the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, to convene a meeting for early that evening.

Image

...as Mr. Clark’s pronouncement was sinking in, stunning news broke out of Georgia: State officials had recorded an hourlong call, published by The Washington Post, during which Mr. Trump pressured them to manufacture enough votes to declare him the victor. As the fallout from the recording ricocheted through Washington, the president’s desperate bid to change the outcome in Georgia came into sharp focus.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue pressed ahead, informing Steven Engel, the head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, about Mr. Clark’s latest maneuver. Mr. Donoghue convened a late-afternoon call with the department’s remaining senior leaders, laying out Mr. Clark’s efforts to replace Mr. Rosen.

Mr. Rosen planned to soon head to the White House to discuss his fate, Mr. Donoghue told the group. Should Mr. Rosen be fired, they all agreed to resign en masse. For some, the plan brought to mind the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of the Nixon era, where Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than carry out the president’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating him.

The Clark plan, the officials concluded, would seriously harm the department, the government and the rule of law. For hours, they anxiously messaged and called one another as they awaited Mr. Rosen’s fate.

Around 6 p.m., Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Clark met at the White House with Mr. Trump, Mr. Cipollone, his deputy Patrick Philbin and other lawyers. Mr. Trump had Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark present their arguments to him.

Mr. Cipollone advised the president not to fire Mr. Rosen and he reiterated, as he had for days, that he did not recommend sending the letter to Georgia lawmakers. Mr. Engel advised Mr. Trump that he and the department’s remaining top officials would resign if he fired Mr. Rosen, leaving Mr. Clark alone at the department.

Mr. Trump seemed somewhat swayed by the idea that firing Mr. Rosen would trigger not only chaos at the Justice Department, but also congressional investigations and possibly recriminations from other Republicans and distract attention from his efforts to overturn the election results.

After nearly three hours, Mr. Trump ultimately decided that Mr. Clark’s plan would fail, and he allowed Mr. Rosen to stay.

Mr. Rosen and his deputies concluded they had weathered the turmoil. Once Congress certified Mr. Biden’s victory, there would be little for them to do until they left along with Mr. Trump in two weeks.

They began to exhale days later as the Electoral College certification at the Capitol got underway. And then they received word: The building had been breached.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.

Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. :{@:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;text-size-adjust:100%;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;text-decoration-line:none;display:inline-block"):}:ktbenner

FAIL

https://www.ecowatch.com/juliana-v-united-states-tossed-2644863188.html

An  appeals court tossed out the landmark youth climate lawsuit *Juliana v. United States* Friday, arguing that the courts are not the place to resolve the climate crisis.

The three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the 21 young plaintiffs that the U.S. government had actively contributed to climate change by supporting a fossil-fuel based economy and that the young people had been injured by its actions, The Guardian explained. However, the majority ruled that the courts did not have the power to order a plan for government action to address the crisis, as the 12-to-23-year-old plaintiffs had requested.

"Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power," Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz wrote in the court's... "Rather, the plaintiffs' impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government."

[twt]

The  decision raises the question of where young people can turn to ensure their futures are protected.

"The idea that their only recourse is to go to the very branches of government that are violating their rights when half of them can't even vote is a preposterous notion," the young people's lead lawyer Julia Olson told The New York Times.

In her dissent, Judge Josephine L. Staton agreed, criticizing her colleagues for "throw[ing] up their hands."

"Where is the hope in today's decision?" she wrote. "Plaintiffs' claims are based on science, specifically, an impending point of no return. If plaintiffs' fears, backed by the government's own studies, prove true, history will not judge us kindly. When the seas envelop our coastal cities, fires and droughts haunt our interiors, and storms ravage everything between, those remaining will ask: Why did so many do so little?"

The lawsuit was filed in 2015 by the 21 plaintiffs with the support of the nonprofit Our Children's Trust, according to Climate Liability News. It argues that by supporting a fossil-fuel based economy despite evidence it was contributing to climate change, the federal government violated the public trust and the young plaintiffs' constitutional rights to life, liberty and property.

For example, plaintiff Levi Draheim, 12, has had to repeatedly evacuate his home in Satellite Beach, Florida because of more extreme storms, according to The Guardian. Jaime Butler, 19, has been separated from her home and relatives in Navajo Nation because of water insecurity.

The federal government has tried to dismiss the case several times since it was filed, according to Climate Liability News. And Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark told The New York Times that the government was "pleased with the outcome" of Friday's decision.

However, Our Children's Trust and the plaintiffs have vowed to keep fighting and to ask the full Ninth Circuit to review the decision, the group announced in a press release.

"We will continue this case because only the courts can help us," Draheim said. "We brought this lawsuit to secure our liberties and protect our lives and our homes. Much like the civil rights cases, we firmly believe the courts can vindicate our constitutional rights and we will not stop until we get a decision that says so."

If the full Ninth Circle refuses to hear the case, the group would then have to appeal to the Supreme Court, Climate Liability News explained....Supreme Court Puts Historic Youth Climate Lawsuit on Hold ... ›

==

==

icn 1119

...

California's Environmental Record

Although the allegations by the Trump administration each contain a grain of truth, they paint a misleading picture of California's record on clean air and water.

California does indeed have the largest backlog of Clean Air Act implementation plans, but that is in part because the state has 35 regional authorities responsible for pollution regulation. In many of the backlogged cases, California is awaiting EPA actionon proposed implementation plans, state authorities pointed out in a letter to Wheeler.

As the nation's most populous state and the largest by far in the size of its economy (by GDP it is larger than all but four nations), California indeed has more metropolitan areas than any other state that fail to meet the national air quality standard for smog. But California, so prone to poor air quality in the valleys between its coastlines and mountain ranges, has been ahead of the nation in setting standards to control air pollution, greatly reducing it over the past 50 years.

"California historicallyhashad the worst air quality in the nation," said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy for the American Lung Association. "Also, since the late 1950s, no state has done more to reduce air pollution than the state of California. And they have done it as their population and economy have grown."

Ironically, the greenhouse gas standards that Trump is seeking to overturn would have the benefit of further improving urban air quality. The rules are designed to drive greater adoption of electric cars, which would further reduce the fossil fuel pollutants that are precursors to smog.

The Trump administration's attacks belie its stated concern on clean air, argues Billings. "It seems to be politically motivated and about scoring points in some game and not about trying to improve the air quality in California," he said.

The threat to withhold federal highway funds from California was a shock for those familiar with EPA history, since that is a rarely imposed nuclear option in Clean Air Act enforcement.

"Sanctions are appropriate when a state is basically refusing to do what the law requires," said Janet McCabe, who served as acting assistant administrator in charge of the air pollution program at EPA during the Obama administration. "Almost all the time, states are working very hard to implement their responsibilities under the Clean Air Act. It's hard, and it takes a long time. As long as a state is working in good faith, I would say that is not a sanction situation."

Similarly, the EPA's allegations and threatened action against California on water pollution run counter to the administration's hands-off approach. EPA enforcement actions, inspections and penalties all are at their lowest levels in a decade under the Trump administration. Moreover, 45 states have a higher percentage of water systems or dischargers in significant violation of federal water standards than California, according to an analysis of EPA's own data by Cynthia Giles, a guest fellow at Harvard Law School who headed the EPA enforcement office during the Obama administration.

"You target California despite the fact that California has one of the best compliance records in the country," Giles said in a letter to Wheeler.

Political Appointees Spearheading Attacks

The EPA notice of violation to San Francisco came only days after the city's water board adopted a more stringent water treatment permit, aimed at eliminating discharges of partially treated wastewater to the ocean. The EPA and California authorities had been working together on an enforcement action on San Francisco's sewage system, but the EPA dropped the joint effort.

"This development is confounding, and contrary to [a] long history of productive state-federal cooperative enforcement," California Environmental Protection Secretary Jared Blumenfeld wrote in an Oct. 25 letter to Wheeler. Wheeler had reportedly bypassed the EPA's West Coast team to handle the actions against California from headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Likewise, the Justice Department action seeking to dismantle California's cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec is being advanced by an unusually limited team of lawyers, pointed out Sean Hecht, a former deputy attorney general for California who is co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, Law School.

That case is being led by Trump's appointee to Justice's Environment and Natural Resources Division,Jeffrey Bossert Clark, aformer lawyer for oil giant BP who has characterized Obama-era greenhouse gas regulation as "reminiscent of kind of a Leninistic program." Only members of Clark's own team are listed on the case. It doesn't list members of the civil division of the Justice Department, who would ordinarily handle foreign treaty or compact cases, nor personnel from the local U.S. Attorney's office.

"The idea the case 'isn't political' seems fanciful," Hecht wrote on UCLA and Berkeley'sLegal Planet blog.

Newsom, a Democrat, has described the Trump administration's moves as "pure retaliation" against a state that has sued the Trump administration 60 times.

Nearly 600 former EPA officials also signed a letter to the House Committees on Oversight and Government Reform and Energy and Commerce calling for a probe into whether the agency's recent actions were improper uses of its authority to punish a state for opposing Trump's political agenda.

California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris have asked the EPA inspector general for an investigation into "whether the White House pressured the agency to abuse its law enforcement authority to single out California and the city of San Francisco." San Francisco is home to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat who is now presiding over Trump's impeachment inquiry.

Turning to the Courts

It will likely be the courts that decide the outcome of the Trump administration's battles with California. And on the state's greenhouse gas emissions standards for autos, the legal hurdle that the Trump administration faces is high.

==

619

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04062019/children-climate-change-lawsuit-health-risk-juliana-case-appeals-court

The 21 children and young adults suing the federal government over climate change argue that they and their generation are already suffering the consequences of climate change, from worsening allergies and asthma to the health risks and stress that come with hurricanes, wildfires and sea level rise threatening their homes.

With the case back in court on Tuesday, some of the heaviest hitters in the public health arena—including 15 major health organization and two former U.S. surgeons general—have been publicly backing them up.

Today's children will feel the health impacts of climate change into adulthood if the federal government doesn't transition away from fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, public health experts wrote in a letter published May 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), echoing a larger court brief signed onto by major health organizations.

"More frequent and longer heat waves, increasing intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts and wildfires, worsening infectious-disease exposures, food and water insecurity, and air pollution from fossil-fuel burning all threaten to destabilize our public health and health care infrastructure," the authors wrote.

Children and infants are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as their bodies are still developing, they said. Their respiratory rates are also higher, so particles from fossil fuel burning and ozone take a greater toll. Increasing temperatures contribute to heat stroke risk for children, and can harm babies in utero. And warming temperatures can affect the spread of disease-carrying vectors like ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease, and mosquitoes, which can carry viruses like Zika.

"These are affecting children's health now, and certainly affecting their future," said Frederica Perera, a co-author of the letter and the director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University. "It's not an abstraction, and not some future threat. It is happening now."

Researchers are only beginning to understand the magnitude of health issues caused by climate change, said Renee Salas, another co-author of the letter and an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. "We are just scratching the surface in our understanding of what those health burdens truly are," she said.

Salas said she hopes the lawsuit and letter "can continue to make climate change personal for people, because health truly is that common denominator that we all share."

Government's Climate Duties and Failures

In their lawsuit, Juliana vs. United States, the children and young adults accuse the federal government of violating their constitutional rights by failing to take action on climate change and continuing to promote and subsidize fossil fuels.

The lawsuit is based on the public trust doctrine, a legal concept that the government holds resources such as land, water or fisheries in trust for its citizens.Climate litigators contend that the government is a trustee of the atmosphere, too, and the young plaintiffs argue that the government abrogated its duty to limit fossil fuel use and cut greenhouse gas emissions, despite knowledge for decades that combustion of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and changes the climate. 

The federal government has fought the case at every turn and has tried repeatedly to get it dismissed, which led to this latest hearing.

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard the two sides' arguments, which the judges will now consider as they weigh whether the case will be allowed to move forward.

The children's lawyer, Julia Olson from Our Children's Trust, faced off against U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark, a Trump administration appointee who represented the oil giant BP in lawsuits over the nation's largest oil spill and has repeatedly challenged the science of climate change. So far, the government's lawyers haven't contested the argument that climate change is harming the plaintiffs. Instead, they have said the federal government is not responsible and have focused on arguments that the court doesn't have the authority to order the political branches to act.

During the hearing, the judges asked tough questions of both sides. The Supreme Court had warned the appeals court to tread carefully in the highly unusual and potentially precedent-setting case, and the judges were doing so.

"You present compelling evidence that we have a real problem," Judge Andrew Hurwitz told Olson. "You present compelling evidence that we have inaction by the other two branches of government. It may even rise to the level of criminal neglect. The tough question for me, and I suspect for my colleagues, is do we get to act because of that."

"You're arguing for us to break new ground," the judge said.

Clark, arguing for the government, told the judges that a ruling for the plaintiffs would be "a dagger at the separation of powers."

Olson focused on the children's constitutional rights to life and personal security, saying future generations would look back and see that "government-sanctioned climate disruption was the constitutional issue of this century."

The plaintiffs are calling for sweeping changes in federal climate efforts and in government programs that subsidize or foster the development of fossil fuels. The trial, if allowed to proceed, could bring to light decades of federal policy on fossil fuels and climate change—including information previously unknown to the public.

'They Were Born Into This Problem'

==

bernhardt?

US Sues California, Says Water Policy Violates State Law - The New ...

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/03/28/us/ap-us-california-water-wars.html

16 hours ago - The federal government has sued California over water policies it says violate ... The lawsuit filed Thursday in Sacramento federal court seeks to block a plan ... salmon by increasing water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. ... The U.S. Department of Justice said the plan was arbitrary and failed to ...

US Sues California, Says Water Policy Violates State Law

By The Associated Press

March 28, 2019

LOS ANGELES — The federal government sued California on Thursday over a water policy it said violates the state's environmental protection law.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in Sacramento federal court to block a contentious plan approved in December to increase river flows in the San Joaquin River and three tributaries to help revive dwindling salmon populations.

It was part of a larger effort to protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which state officials called an "ecosystem in crisis." The delta supplies water for the majority of California's people and farms.

Once-thriving fish in the delta, which flows out to San Francisco Bay, have plunged from some 70,000 adult Chinook salmon returning to the San Joaquin basin in the fall of 1984 to just 10,000 in 2017.

Some environmental groups supported the plan, while other conservation groups and fishing groups said it fell short in providing enough water for habitat.

Farmers opposed to the plan because it would divert less water for irrigation protested last summer outside the state Capitol.

The U.S. lawsuit said the plan was arbitrary and the state failed to analyze impacts on the environment and would reduce water coming out of the New Melones reservoir for farms, businesses and hydroelectric operations.

The environmental analysis "hid the true impacts of their plan and could put substantial operational constraints on the Department of the Interior's ability to effectively operate the New Melones Dam, which plays a critical role in flood control, irrigation, and power generation in the Sacramento region," said Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark said in a statement.

The federal government's lawsuit follows a suit filed last month in state court by the California Farm Bureau Federation to block the plan.

George Kostyrko, a spokesman for the water board, said the agency looks forward to defending the plan that involved years of analysis and public input.

The lawsuit was an unusual turn of events with the state of California as a defendant in a lawsuit with the federal government. The state's attorney general has sued the Trump administration more 47 times.

Attorney Doug Obegi of the Natural Resources Defense Council said it was ironic that the U.S. government was citing state law to sue California in federal court.

"The Trump administration has shown its flagrant disregard for state laws for some time, so it's not surprising in that regard," Obegi said. "I can't for the life of me see how a federal court lawsuit against a state agency for a claimed violation of state law doesn't get tossed out immediately for violating the U.S. Constitution."

The NRDC said the December decision was a step forward, but it wouldn't do enough to reach the goal to double the salmon population.

John McManus, president of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, said the plan approved in December had "re-balanced a badly out of balance water diversion scheme" and the suit was a "frivolous attempt to see more water diverted and more salmon industry jobs and families destroyed."

==

yikes

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11102018/oil-spill-lawyer-jeffrey-bossert-clark-confirmed-top-environment-attorney-climate-change-policy-chamber-commerce

Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who represented BP in lawsuits over the nation's largest oil spill and has repeatedly challenged the science of climate change, was confirmed Thursday by the Senate to serve as the nation's top environmental lawyer—a key position for the defense of President Donald Trump's regulatory rollback.

Lawmakers voted 52 to 45 to confirm Clark to serve as assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources.

In that post, Clark will steer the federal government's defense of the slew of legal challenges the Trump administration faces over its repeal of environment and climate regulations. He also will be responsible for taking polluters and other environmental lawbreakers to court as head of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.  Clark has represented numerous oil industry clients as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis, including defending BP in lawsuits by fishing businesses and others who sued the oil company in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Clark also represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in lawsuits challenging the federal government's authority to regulate carbon emissions. In court, he repeatedly argued that it is inappropriate to base government policymaking on the scientific consensus presented by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

"When did America risk coming to be ruled by foreign scientists and apparatchiks at the United Nations?" Clark demanded in a 2010 blogpost on the EPA's endangerment finding. In a 2010 talk at a convention of the conservative Federalist Society, he said the Obama administration's policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions were "reminiscent of kind of a Leninistic program from the 1920s to seize control of the commanding heights of the economy."

In 2016, he filed a "friend of the court" brief against the Clean Power Plan, the nation's first limits on carbon emissions from power plants, on behalf of a non-profit group that opposes regulation, Consumers' Research. Environmental groups could use that as a basis to seek Clark's recusal in the inevitable litigation ahead over the Trump administration's Clean Power Plan repeal.

Critics of Clark pointed out that the Senate was confirming someone who had called the science of climate change "contestable" during a week when a Category 4 hurricane hit the Southeast and the IPCC warned that time is running out to head off catastrophic warming.

Clark is "exactly the wrong person to be in this job of enforcing regulations to clean up our environment," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) the minority whip.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised Clark for his background as a litigator. "Mr. Clark's legal colleagues describe him as one of the most capable lawyers with whom they've ever worked," he said.

Two Democrats who are facing tough re-election battles in red-leaning states, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, joined Republicans in voting to confirm Clark. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, now seen as the most endangered red-state Democrat in November, did not vote. The two Florida senators, Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Marco Rubio, were focused on the devastation in their state in the wake of Hurricane Michael and also didn't vote on Clark's confirmation.

Clark, who was nominated for the post more than a year ago, was one of nearly 200 Trump appointees awaiting confirmation, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

POLITICS

REGULATION

CLIMATE CHANGE

GULF OIL SPILL

DONALD TRUMP

A former BP PLC lawyer and a vocal critic of climate change regulations will face senators this week as he aims to become the Trump administration's top environmental attorney.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday will hold the confirmation hearing for Jeffrey Bossert Clark to be assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.

The committee will also consider two nominees to be judges on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as well as Trump's choice to be assistant attorney general for DOJ's Office of Legal Policy.

As head of ENRD, Clark would lead DOJ's defense against litigation challenging the Trump administration's bid to unravel President Obama's environmental rules. He would also lead DOJ's enforcement of environmental laws and regulations.

Clark is an attorney at law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP who represented BP during the litigation following the company's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department's environment division secured a $20 billion settlement agreement with the company for the incident, which killed 11 people and spewed 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Clark is also a prominent critic of greenhouse gas regulations and the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, and has played a role in litigation over the agency's finding that emissions endanger public health and welfare.

At a 2010 panel at the National Lawyers Convention, he called EPA's greenhouse gas program "reminiscent of kind of a Leninistic program from the 1920s to seize control of the commanding heights of the economy" (*E&E Daily*, June 7).

During the George W. Bush administration, Clark was deputy assistant attorney general for ENRD, overseeing the division's Appellate Section and Indian Resources Section. There, he worked on Supreme Court cases involving environmental and natural resources law.

ENRD is responsible for representing EPA in court challenges. Clark would likely be recused from legal matters involving litigation he's handled as a private attorney, if he is confirmed.

He would replace Jeffrey Wood, a former utility lobbyist and staffer for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has held the position since Trump's inauguration.

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, June 28, at 9:30 a.m. in 226 Dirksen.

Witnesses: Timothy Kelly and Trevor McFadden, nominees to be judges on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; Jeffrey Bossert Clark, nominee to be assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division; and Beth Ann Williams, nominee to be assistant attorney general for DOJ's Office of Legal Policy.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06062017/trump-names-bp-oil-spill-lawyer-climate-policy-foe-top-doj-environment-attorney

Jeffrey Bossert Clark, a lawyer who has repeatedly challenged the scientific foundations of U.S. climate policy and was part of a legal team that represented BP in lawsuits stemming from the nation's worst oil spill, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, was nominated by President Donald Trump on Tuesday to serve as the Justice Department's top environmental lawyer.

Clark, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis, has represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in lawsuits challenging the federal government's authority to regulate carbon emissions. In court he has repeatedly argued that it is inappropriate to base government policymaking on the scientific consensus presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"When did America risk coming to be ruled by foreign scientists and apparatchiks at the United Nations?" Clark demanded in a 2010 blog posting on the EPA's endangerment finding.

Clark was prominently involved in industry challenges to the EPA's "endangerment finding" that set the scientific basis for all subsequent attempts to regulate greenhouse gases, including from autos and industrial sources. It was a demonstration of opposition to the underpinnings of the whole Obama administration regulatory approach to carbon dioxide, which were consistently upheld by the Supreme Court.

One of the legal briefs he signed is such a comprehensive compendium of thoroughly debunked denial of the scientific consensus that it stands as a classic of the genre, replete with condemnations not just of the EPA but of the IPCC, whose work the petitioners tried to persuade the court to rule out of bounds. A series of podcasts and papers he has written on The Federalist Society website continue his arguments against the endangerment finding and climate science more broadly.

"He has a long history of opposing climate action for corporate and ideological clients," saidDavid Doniger, who heads the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council,after learning of Clark's nomination. "I would expect that history would require him to recuse himself from such cases as over the Clean Power Plan, where he filed an amicus brief against the rule." 

In one case Clark presented on behalf of theChamber of Commerce, a brief argued that, under Obama-era policies, starting with the endangerment finding, "hundreds of billions and possibly trillions will be drained from the American economy based on novel legal theories marking "a significant shift of power from the Legislative Branch to the Executive Branch."

The brief said that the legal basis of carbon controls under the Clean Air Act "generated what quite likely are the costliest regulations ever promulgated based on EPA's belief that it can take a red pencil to plain statutory text"— an argument that resonates through Trump administration policies to this day.

"EPA asserted a new regulatory jurisdiction over essentially every energy-consuming building and activity in the nation, all the way down to houses of worship, neighborhood bakeries, and private homes," the brief said.

In 2007, shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in the case that established the endangerment finding, Clark spoke to the American Enterprise Institute, saying the finding was where the court "erred most significantly."

"They wanted to be able to compel the agency to determine whether CO2 and other greenhouse gas emission were causing or contributing to climate change," he said. "They didn't have that procedural right. At every possible turn, though,  they attempted to pitch their case that way and it would seem the Supreme Court bought into that."

Clark also successfully defended BP in a legal challenge brought by Louisiana parishes over the company's multi-billion settlement of claims stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to his law firm. He was involved in the fight against the U.S. government to obtain documents regarding officials' deliberations over how fast the oil was flowing. The size of the oil spill, which was deeply underestimated at first, was crucial to determining the penalties that BP might face.

Clark served in the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2005 as deputy assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Justice Department. His nomination to become assistant attorney general for the same department in the Trump administration will require Senate confirmation.

InsideClimate

PUBLISHED UNDER:

POLITICS

GULF OIL SPILL

DONALD TRUMP

CLIMATE CHANGE