Episode 172 LIVE： The Jeff Clark Story (feat. Jeff Clark) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
Summary
Jeff Clark is a former senior lawyer at the Department of Justice who served as the lead counsel on the DOJ's election integrity unit in charge of investigating allegations of election fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. In this episode, Jeff talks about how he and other DOJ lawyers fought to protect the integrity of the process and fight for fair and impartial elections.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Matt Gaetz, the biggest firebrand inside of the House of Representatives.
00:00:07.400
You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
00:00:09.800
Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
00:00:14.520
We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight.
00:00:19.720
I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.
00:00:26.240
If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around.
00:00:37.900
It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.
00:00:55.220
We're broadcasting live from the Rumble Studios here in our nation's capital in Washington, D.C.
00:00:59.860
Remember, the best way to consume firebrand, download the Rumble app, set your notifications on.
00:01:05.660
That way, when we have conversations, when we've got breaking news, and when we've got the Gaetz network running 24-7,
00:01:12.580
you're going to be able to have access to the information that will make you the smartest person in the room
00:01:16.460
and informed as to the true character and nature of the decision-making process here in Washington, D.C.
00:01:21.780
Now, one of the things that we talk about frequently on the program is lawfare,
00:01:25.820
the weaponization of the justice system against those who are righteously in the fight.
00:01:30.660
And we're going to do a deep dive in some of those election integrity issues
00:01:34.380
and the ways in which this Biden Justice Department has really targeted people
00:01:40.060
and has really taken what we believe about due process and about evidentiary presentations
00:01:46.220
and instead used the awesome powers of the Department of Justice to suppress evidence
00:01:52.740
and then to try to hassle people and do great harm to our country.
00:01:57.980
That's unfortunately what we've seen in too many circumstances.
00:02:00.280
And there's no better person who I think has been fighting the good fight than my good friend Jeff Clark.
00:02:09.120
A lot of people remember you as the mild-mannered environmental lawyer at the Department of Justice.
00:02:15.460
And when we started to see in Congress, when others started to see real concerns
00:02:20.620
about the way the 2020 election was being sort of adjudicated and investigated,
00:02:27.000
that there was an active effort to shut down review of different allegations.
00:02:33.280
And we know as lawyers that allegations are not evidence.
00:02:36.760
You have to corroborate things that you hear from people.
00:02:39.760
You've got to look at the validity of documents.
00:02:41.840
But just for a moment, before we get into everything that's kind of happened since,
00:02:46.340
bring my audience to that, to what it was like for you as a senior lawyer in the Justice Department
00:02:52.720
when you started to see some of these concerns percolate about the 2020 election
00:02:58.540
and kind of the ethic and dynamic that was going on at DOJ at that time.
00:03:13.040
And I'm watching all of the election irregularities mount up one after another, right?
00:03:18.520
You know, the late night dumps of ballots, the shutting down of the counting process,
00:03:23.720
the fake water main break at the Georgia Atlantic Convention Center.
00:03:28.620
And, you know, I'm just scratching my head and I'm like, what are we doing about this?
00:03:31.520
So Bill Barr puts out a memo on November 9th, 2020, and he says that all of the U.S.
00:03:37.240
attorney's offices, the head of the criminal division and the head of the civil rights
00:03:40.520
division can investigate allegations of election, not just fraud, but also irregularities.
00:03:46.220
And I thought, all right, well, you know, they're doing something right.
00:03:56.440
And so, you know, eventually I went to talk to some of the Uber leaders of the Justice
00:04:02.760
Department at the time and, you know, express my concerns and said, what's going on?
00:04:07.120
And what I was basically told was, you know, we were told by different parts of the career
00:04:24.940
There's a multi-hundred page election manual that the criminal division, which has charge
00:04:30.060
of election investigations primarily historically, has.
00:04:34.740
And, you know, I saw all sorts of provisions that could be used.
00:04:38.000
And I also thought that, you know, some of the things I was hearing out of the states,
00:04:42.300
like in Georgia, the idea that while there were no options because they couldn't go into
00:04:47.400
special session, so they couldn't investigate the fact that they'd gotten a report from one
00:04:51.920
of their own senators, Senator Ligon, who'd done a multi-day hearings.
00:04:55.600
And he'd gotten a lot of, you know, evidence collected of fraud and irregularities in especially
00:05:01.640
Fulton County, but in other parts of Georgia as well.
00:05:03.940
And, you know, I came up with the idea of, you know, trying to tell them that they have
00:05:11.460
the power directly as a direct U.S. Constitution delegation to call themselves into special session
00:05:17.660
because they have that direct delegation to regulate the election under the Elector's Clause,
00:05:22.680
And then we started talking about that issue internally.
00:05:28.540
And that firestorm, you know, led to all the other things we'll get into, like just a house
00:05:36.300
And then this was all internal to the Justice Department.
00:05:39.360
And, you know, there are still many parts of it that I think are privileged and the details
00:05:45.380
And President Trump's asked me, you know, he's invoked executive privilege on my behalf twice.
00:05:49.700
And so, but, you know, there are parts of the story that have been made so public that
00:05:55.800
And, you know, that was all the result of anonymous leaks from my own colleagues, many of whom
00:06:02.140
were Trump appointees, although not all of them were Trump appointees, to the New York
00:06:09.340
And ever since I've been canceled by big law, I've been attacked constantly by MSNBC and CNN.
00:06:15.160
And, you know, the rest of the story we'll get into.
00:06:17.300
Yeah, I think that it showcases the way the regime fights back.
00:06:22.160
But I think there's two theories of the case about those moments at DOJ directly following
00:06:27.560
the certification from, well, not even leading up to the certification.
00:06:33.580
One theory is, well, these were just a bunch of buffoons who had no real understanding of
00:06:39.760
their powers to investigate these claims of irregularity or what you were seeing in affidavits
00:06:49.200
And then there's another theory of the case where they were actively suppressing the organic
00:06:57.140
upward movement of information from field offices, from state and local authorities, from even
00:07:05.860
They were actively ensuring that that never developed into a legitimate investigation.
00:07:13.640
I don't think that Barr and his top people were just too incompetent to investigate election
00:07:19.620
I think they were subversive in the way that they purposefully tried to diminish any concern
00:07:29.020
I think it is, especially based on things that some things I did not know at the time that
00:07:34.800
So we know that Bill McSwain, the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, my hometown, the Eastern District
00:07:41.000
of Pennsylvania, he had serious information about election fraud in Philadelphia.
00:07:46.300
And Philadelphia is a hotbed of fraud, which I also knew from my mom, who was a Republican
00:07:51.900
poll worker, and also from this scandal in the 1990s, I actually interviewed with a judge
00:07:59.300
who had this case called Nueva Forma, that the Democrats were basically trying to do some
00:08:10.760
They threw the book at that case, and that was shut down in Philadelphia.
00:08:20.220
And I want you to turn over any evidence you have to Josh Shapiro, who was then the attorney
00:08:27.500
general, right, who had already pre-announced that Biden was going to win the election.
00:08:33.580
There's Larry Keefe in Florida, U.S. attorney in Florida.
00:08:38.160
He had information that related to shenanigans tied to-
00:08:48.640
And indeed, Barr issued a threat that if I ever, you know, hear about this again from
00:08:54.460
The third incident I would point to is that, you know, there were these allegations from
00:09:01.060
the postal truck driver in Bethpage, New York, that he was taking, you know, ballots suspiciously
00:09:08.060
And that was being investigated by the Amistad project and by Colonel Schaefer.
00:09:15.900
And Barr winds up on the phone yelling at Colonel Schaefer to tells him to shut down the investigation.
00:09:24.460
So we have Barr's testimony after to the January 6th committee.
00:09:29.060
And unlike many witnesses, like witnesses, you know, generally tend to get like a few minutes
00:09:34.100
to say something, you know, to kind of set the stage for themselves.
00:09:37.740
But he was allowed, I think, in an unprecedented way, since I've read many of those deposition
00:09:43.480
There's some that, you know, apparently have been destroyed that we don't have.
00:09:51.000
But he was allowed to say, look, I want to set out three categories.
00:09:54.500
There's a category of election laws being changed by actors within a state other than
00:10:02.880
the legislature, because the electors' clause says the state legislature is in charge of
00:10:07.880
And so that's an unconstitutional problem right there, right?
00:10:10.960
The second category is there's election law, you know, in the state legislature.
00:10:23.020
You know, like the equivalent of stuffing ballots, you know, either electronically or
00:10:27.720
physically or putting in mail-in ballots that aren't legitimate.
00:10:32.140
He's like, we only looked at the third category.
00:10:37.740
Like, why would you disclaim authority to look at those two things?
00:10:40.780
Those were vital elements of what was going on in using COVID as a cover to have this entire
00:10:48.760
And then I guess then I'll say, here's a fifth element.
00:10:51.320
Barr brought in the U.S. attorney from the Eastern District of New York, and he was not
00:11:01.200
He was appointed by the judges of that district, which is pursuant to a statute that I'd urge
00:11:07.100
you actually to take a look at because I think it's unconstitutional.
00:11:09.760
I think the president has to make all appointments.
00:11:13.580
But he took him as the U.S. attorney and he moved him to make him what we call in DOJ main
00:11:18.300
justice, the pay dag, the principal associate deputy attorney general.
00:11:22.460
So he becomes the number two for the deputy attorney general, who's the number two in the
00:11:27.700
So Donahue is brought in and he's given exclusive charge of all election-related investigations.
00:11:33.640
And I have no idea why you would bring in, why would, first of all, why would a U.S.
00:11:42.100
Instead of running his entire office and the Brooklyn U.S. attorney's office, they think
00:11:46.460
of themselves as, you know, as good as or better than the Southern District of New York,
00:11:51.740
which they tend to think of themselves in elevated terms.
00:11:54.580
So why would someone want to leave running their own show in the Brooklyn U.S. attorney's
00:11:59.660
office, which also can be a very lucrative position to get, and come in and be the pay dag
00:12:06.980
They only have the authority that the deputy attorney general gives them.
00:12:12.820
And so I see that also as part and parcel of the fact that your second hypothesis is the
00:12:19.420
And so the criticism of your efforts largely centers around the argument that you were trying
00:12:26.100
to operate in a way outside of our institutions, that our institutions have this way to contemplate
00:12:32.660
these questions, and you go rogue and you try to operate outside the institutions.
00:12:38.120
But as I've reviewed the memo that you wrote that was like falsely deemed the insurrection
00:12:45.880
memo, it is actually a roadmap on how to use a constitutionally contemplated process and
00:12:52.420
how to use the institutions that exist, be it the legislature, be it the Department of
00:12:59.020
Like that must be as a Harvard-educated lawyer, as someone who's worked at a lot of these white
00:13:06.680
collar law firms, it must be intensely frustrating that the criticism really showcases the vulnerability
00:13:14.760
of the people who were trying to use the institutions to subvert the evidence and squash the evidence.
00:13:20.880
And you are merely trying to use our institutions to conduct a lawful proper constitutional investigation.
00:13:33.120
And look, it led them to make accusations that are ridiculous and easily legally pierced.
00:13:42.580
For instance, you know, at some points they've argued that, well, the Justice Department can't
00:13:47.720
send letters to people, you know, and can't send letters to states.
00:13:50.920
And I was like, why do we have an intergovernmental liaison function if that's true?
00:13:58.420
And indeed, you know, a very early act in the Biden Justice Department was the acting Assistant
00:14:05.400
Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, Pam Carlin, who was a law professor at Stanford,
00:14:13.540
When I went into the Justice Department in 2018, the ethics officials told me that I would
00:14:19.980
need to resign my unpaid volunteer position as the head of one of the practice groups for
00:14:26.360
And so, you know, I handed it off to somebody else.
00:14:32.920
The ethics people cleared Pam Carlin while she was the acting Assistant Attorney General
00:14:37.800
of the Civil Rights Division to continue to receive her $900,000 a year salary from Stanford.
00:14:43.540
And so she sends a letter when Arizona is doing their audit.
00:14:48.120
She sends, and one of the components was to start canvassing.
00:14:51.040
She sends a letter to them and says, don't do that.
00:14:55.300
Oh, no, we covered that extensively on Firebrand about that effort by the Justice Department
00:15:00.440
to scare states into, you know, into basically lethargy so that they weren't doing the hygiene
00:15:08.600
that you would do to continue to have clean elections.
00:15:11.200
So you seek the lawful, legal, constitutionally contemplated process, and then you get hammered
00:15:25.420
For folks that are just kind of getting familiar with their story, and we're going to introduce
00:15:28.880
the movie in a moment, like from that moment when you wrote the memo we discussed to engage
00:15:35.000
this lawful process, like the things that have happened in your life.
00:15:40.340
Well, it really started with the anonymously sourced story, which only could have come from lawyers
00:15:47.620
because there was a big showdown meeting, and you'll see that, I think, in the preview
00:15:57.340
Everybody in the meeting, with the exception of President Trump, was a lawyer.
00:16:00.320
And so all of them were bound by confidentiality.
00:16:03.640
I certainly didn't go to the New York Times and start laying out the details of what happened
00:16:09.320
So clearly my opponents did, and they're the ones who violated ethical strictures and the
00:16:16.080
laws of confidentiality within the federal government to do that.
00:16:21.260
And then, you know, that led to the press descending on my house constantly, harassing me, following
00:16:26.440
me, you know, trying to talk to the children, et cetera.
00:16:31.180
Then, you know, the committee started coming after me.
00:16:35.200
No, first the House Oversight Committee under Carolyn Maloney, then the Senate Judiciary Committee
00:16:40.900
under Durbin, and then the January 6th committee.
00:16:46.100
And then, as a result of that, actually, you know, wound up being canceled and needed to find
00:16:52.380
And that, you know, one reason why I'm very thankful to Russ Vogt, my colleague from the
00:16:56.220
Trump administration, is that now I'm gainfully employed at the Center for Renewing America.
00:17:01.720
So, you know, there was economic pressure, there are legal fees, so many multiple proceedings.
00:17:10.840
My applications to law firms, which I, you know, put in after the end of the Trump administration,
00:17:18.640
those all died because, you know, that they just took at face value these ridiculous stories
00:17:23.860
that President Trump and I were plotting a coup, and that in particular, right, that I was
00:17:30.660
That there could be, if it's not me, it's John Eastman or some combination of us or something,
00:17:35.700
even though we weren't working together on anything.
00:17:37.920
Yeah, we share your very high view of the Center for Renewing America, everything that
00:17:43.040
And they've made this terrific, this terrific movie I want to get into, Fearless, at the
00:17:49.640
But when the committees were after you, I mean, ultimately, ultimately, the committee, the
00:17:54.380
congressional committees were after you to try to catch you in misremembering something
00:18:03.340
And so you went and asserted your Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid that perjury trap.
00:18:07.720
Well, so the story is a little more complicated.
00:18:10.080
So first, the House Oversight Committee comes after me.
00:18:12.480
We're kind of talking to them, you know, about parameters, about the fact that a lot of this
00:18:18.100
Then I'm up in New York, actually, in connection with New York City, in connection with a job
00:18:30.420
I don't think I've really told this story in a lot of different forums.
00:18:34.060
A staffer for Senator Durbin sends me a LinkedIn message and says, Senator Durbin wants you to
00:18:42.860
And, you know, I started talking to a lawyer who had done congressional investigations for
00:18:47.240
I was like, he's like, no, you get a letter from the committee.
00:18:50.940
And then, you know, we also discovered that he lacked subpoena power because of the 50-50
00:18:58.180
So, you know, I basically just stiff-armed that and just, you know, didn't go in and
00:19:03.780
And while we were still talking to the House Oversight Committee, one day, the House Oversight
00:19:08.120
Committee representative just hauled off and said, you've been remanded to the January
00:19:13.000
6th committee, so we will no longer be dealing with you.
00:19:16.440
And then the January 6th committee dropped an appearance and a document subpoena on me.
00:19:22.760
And in November 5th, if I remember correctly, in 2021, that's when I showed up for a deposition.
00:19:30.920
They moved the hearing place three times, they said, to accommodate great interest in
00:19:40.140
And so I think they clearly thought that they were going to lay this perjury trap, or they
00:19:44.760
thought that I would cave and I would start saying things that they could use against
00:19:49.380
President Trump, who's their ultimate end, as we all know, their objective to bring him
00:19:57.160
Adam Schiff came in person, and everybody else was up on a, you know, Microsoft Teams kind
00:20:03.820
of set up on the screen, all the members, with the exception of Benny Thompson, the chairman.
00:20:09.320
And, you know, they started launching some questions at us, and we produced like a 25-page,
00:20:14.000
you know, letter memo that said, all of this is executive privileged, it's law enforcement
00:20:19.680
privileged, it's deliberative process privileged, and it is lawyer-client privileged.
00:20:29.240
They went into a tiff, and they said, you exit the room, we're going to have a discussion,
00:20:40.280
And, you know, we walked in, and we could hear they were still debating with each other.
00:20:46.000
There were some of the members who were like, I mean, you know, there's some arguments here,
00:20:50.600
like we're going to have to digest this, we're going to have to, you know, resume the deposition
00:20:54.820
And there were others saying like, no, we're going to do this today.
00:20:57.500
And so we walked in, and then Schiff like turned around angrily, and he's like, you know,
00:21:02.320
go away, like what, you know, we haven't called you back yet.
00:21:04.320
But we obviously only went back once they, you know, like one of the staffers told us to
00:21:08.760
So we went back, waited another 10, 50 minutes, we came back.
00:21:11.980
It was clear the strategy that they came to was that they were going to have Schiff try
00:21:16.940
So he and I went kind of mano a mano on some legal arguments for a while.
00:21:21.660
And then, you know, we're just going round and round the horn with nothing much happening.
00:21:27.280
Liz Cheney in particular wanted to, you know, know the question of what members of Congress
00:21:33.020
had I cooperated with and coordinated with in order to like write the letter, etc.
00:21:38.760
And so, you know, a whole bunch of lines of questions that we refused to answer because
00:21:42.680
it was a perjury trap, and because it's all privileged.
00:21:45.760
And so we just said, look, you can't possibly have digested this 25 page letter in, you know,
00:21:56.000
And then, you know, I got the stern talking to you in the morning.
00:21:59.260
Chairman Thompson has not adjourned this deposition.
00:22:04.280
And so I looked at the big Microsoft Teams thing, which is as big as this wall over here
00:22:09.520
And I said, well, Representative Thompson is not here.
00:22:17.940
And to finish the story, because it's an interesting story, you know, a few hours later, we receive
00:22:23.360
a letter from Benny Thompson that purports to overrule all of the privilege claims with
00:22:29.440
a little bit of, you know, legal argument thrown in.
00:22:33.720
And it says, we hereby order you to return for the continuation of the deposition at, you
00:22:43.820
And so we had some fun writing back and saying, like, we don't have a time machine.
00:22:48.160
And in any event, my lawyer has already boarded a plane to return to Atlanta.
00:22:53.500
And so eventually they tried to hold me in contempt.
00:23:00.920
I sent a long letter beforehand where I stood on that letter, too.
00:23:04.220
But then I went in for a second deposition in early 2022 and took the fifth.
00:23:10.760
And then they just asked me a whole bunch of questions.
00:23:13.820
And then they all they did was attack me in hearings later that year.
00:23:17.920
And they are not the only entity that has been on the attack.
00:23:21.740
You know, whether it's it's been the even the Department of Justice's inspector general
00:23:26.580
showing up at your house and hustling and wrestling you out of bed.
00:23:30.000
Just it seems as though the process is the punishment.
00:23:33.520
And and I tell you what, it really was captured by the Center for Renewing America's
00:23:38.100
recent documentary produced and directed by our good friend Kingsley Wilson.
00:23:42.440
And it it is called Fearless at the point of attack.
00:23:54.000
At the center of Mr. Clark's plan to undo President Trump's election loss was a letter.
00:24:00.780
Just days before the deadly January 6th assault on the Capitol, one of the ex-president's top
00:24:05.940
Department of Justice officials at the time was circulating a draft letter that would have
00:24:11.260
helped Georgia Republicans overturn Biden's victory in that state.
00:24:17.660
The letter indicated that the Georgia legislature could call itself into special session and
00:24:25.420
they should look at the report they had received from their own Senate subcommittee and then
00:24:30.940
decide for themselves whether the certified slate of electors at that time for Joe Biden was
00:24:38.720
I mean, you can't imagine something that seems, you know, more process oriented, right,
00:24:43.820
and more basic and more fundamental to making sure that the American people have confidence
00:24:49.360
in their elections than a recommendation that a state legislature do a further analysis.
00:24:55.100
And yet, you know, the screaming, talking heads on the MSNBCs of the world and the CNNs,
00:25:01.260
you know, they just went into apoplexy about the idea that anyone would suggest this.
00:25:05.160
Before dawn on Wednesday, which is, say, yesterday, a large group of armed federal agents
00:25:11.380
wearing body armor with weapons, raided Jeff Clark's home.
00:25:15.600
They dragged him into the street in his pajamas.
00:25:21.500
What he did wrong was calling for an investigation into voter fraud.
00:25:25.020
When my youngest daughter, who was then 12, came back from Atlanta and nobody else was around,
00:25:30.080
she sat down next to me and she asked, you know, Dad, do you think the agents read my diary?
00:25:34.260
And that really hit me, you know, because there's no one who should have to go through this
00:25:40.120
because of these political battles and these perversions of the justice system.
00:25:44.820
I love the law and I've given my life to the law.
00:25:52.480
I have made law as a state lawmaker and as a federal lawmaker.
00:25:55.720
And so to see my profession weaponized and really just tortured in such a manner, it's very painful.
00:26:06.520
It makes me feel empty about the work of my life on some days when I see what's happening
00:26:13.400
The way you get power in this town is you help your friends and you hurt your enemies.
00:26:17.100
And the DOJ is, I would say, probably the worst example of the worst features of that.
00:26:28.240
Number one is to put Trump and Trump's inner circle of advisors either into bankruptcy
00:26:33.160
or to put him in jail or to break him somehow, like they're trying to do the president.
00:26:38.540
The other aspect of it is to, and this is actually a more advanced element of it,
00:26:43.120
is to make sure that they take out the lawyers.
00:26:48.160
I mean, the whole assault on him every day and the assault in media is a coordinated attempt
00:26:52.920
to basically show, like Eastman, we're going to take out the best guys you have.
00:27:00.280
We will only defeat these people if we are sufficiently relentless.
00:27:06.620
We have to offer everything that we have and like shoot at the Death Star.
00:27:10.380
We have no other choice because to decamp from the legal practice or even our institutions
00:27:16.740
would surrender the greatest country to the most evil people in it.
00:27:20.940
In a word or in a sentence about what could be done, it would be to fight fire with fire.
00:27:25.720
Because until fire is fought with fire, the Republicans are going to be attacked by this lawfare
00:27:32.200
and the Democrats are going to dance around with glee, that they're not facing any consequences
00:27:43.360
We're back live and Jeff Clark is indeed sufficiently relentless.
00:27:49.440
Center for Renewing America has it on their X platform.
00:27:54.680
And it really shows the pattern that we see play out against President Trump, against other fighters.
00:28:04.340
No one would have blamed you to take your brilliant mind, head off and escape this kind of sewer
00:28:16.800
Talk a little bit about the work you're doing now at the Center for Renewing America and
00:28:19.760
how folks can keep up with your writing and your research.
00:28:23.300
Well, you know, thanks for agreeing to be in the movie first.
00:28:30.200
Some of which you saw there in the clip that you played.
00:28:33.300
So at the Center for Renewing America, you know, we have a small but growing team of lawyers
00:28:42.240
You know, we are probably one of Washington's newest think tanks, newest conservative think
00:28:49.500
We have, you know, folks who are working on matters of the intersection of faith and
00:28:58.540
And so, you know, most recently, one of my colleagues, Mark Paoletta and some other affiliates
00:29:05.440
we have put out some great work about the Impoundment Control Act, which, you know, may seem as a, you
00:29:13.300
know, to be something obscure to, you know, listeners, viewers of yours.
00:29:17.040
But look, it's very important because basically it's an attempt to really blow the doors off
00:29:25.900
It's one of the reasons why the budget has been, you know, just the deficit and the debt
00:29:30.780
have exploded since the Nixon administration when they put this statute in.
00:29:40.260
I've done and I'm still doing work about the Justice Department.
00:29:43.820
And so, you know, we got featured for a paper I did about the Justice Department on the front
00:29:48.860
page of the New York Times, actually, a paper that I entitled the DOJ is not independent
00:29:55.040
because another one of these so-called post-Watergate norms is the idea that the Justice Department
00:30:01.820
is separate and apart from the president and that the president can't tell them what to
00:30:06.940
And somehow it's unseemly if he tells them what to do and politicized, et cetera.
00:30:11.620
And, you know, I remember having some early debates about this, even online on X with Kyle
00:30:20.820
He couldn't understand how is it that you could not be politicized if the president is in
00:30:26.780
And I was saying, like, look, you can violate the Equal Protection Clause, right?
00:30:30.820
If a president of one party or the other decides I'm going to prosecute only, you know, members
00:30:36.840
of the opponent party, that's clearly a violation of equal protection, right?
00:30:44.700
The idea, though, that the president is not the head of the executive branch, he is the
00:30:49.480
That means the DOJ reports to him, the attorney general.
00:30:52.880
Which branch of government is the DOJ in, if not the executive branch?
00:30:56.720
Well, you know, what the unstated or sometimes stated answer to that is that, you know, they're
00:31:01.800
part of the fourth branch of government, right?
00:31:04.460
The unelected bureaucracy that wants to be free of presidential power or any other branch's
00:31:10.940
Yeah, that's not really built into our concept of checks and balances, that there's this
00:31:15.240
completely unaccountable floating orb at the Justice Department.
00:31:19.560
Right, and look, you know, I don't want to pat myself on the back too much, but I viewed
00:31:25.380
Merrick Garland, the attorney general's big statement that they broadcast last week from
00:31:32.660
the Great Hall of Justice, which incidentally one of my, you know, big corner offices at
00:31:39.100
The other one was on the floor just above it, behind it.
00:31:41.900
And, you know, he's in the Great Hall of Justice on the second floor of the Justice Department
00:31:46.760
surrounded by, you know, murals of the great figures of justice like, you know, Moses and
00:31:53.920
And he's talking to all the U.S. attorneys and he says, at the Justice Department, we believe
00:31:59.460
in independence and we believe in protecting the norms of, you know, the Justice Department
00:32:06.780
And as my paper explains, and so I really encourage your, you know, viewers and listeners
00:32:12.640
who have an interest in this to go to the website, americarenewing.com and look at that
00:32:20.240
There's the Constitution, there's statutes, there are regulations, there are judicial decisions.
00:32:30.760
And they're certainly not a form of law superior to the Constitution and its separation of powers,
00:32:34.680
which only has three branches, not four, not five.
00:32:37.760
And, you know, I thought that Merrick Garland's entire speech was essentially an attempt to
00:32:42.740
sort of like push back on that and say, no, we want these norms.
00:32:46.500
And we're, you know, desperately threatened by the fact that if President Trump is reelected,
00:32:51.540
these norms that we developed of a fourth branch of government and trying to institutionalize
00:32:56.200
that will go into the ash heap of history, but that's where they should go.
00:33:00.000
Yeah, describing something as a norm in Washington, D.C. used to be vaulted.
00:33:03.540
Now it is like a critique, and rightfully so, by the way, because it's been a lot of these
00:33:08.040
norms that have harmed our country a great deal.
00:33:11.760
Jeff, you know, the question a lot of my viewers will have is, are we ready for what's coming
00:33:16.900
You got such a close look at the way the machine of this town tried to squelch any concerns
00:33:25.800
And I mean, this election is ongoing right now.
00:33:27.740
People are voting in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
00:33:30.000
What would you tell my viewers about the cleanliness and the integrity of the election that is underway
00:33:37.520
Well, I'd like to see that there were more efforts undertaken in that direction.
00:33:45.100
So I think, you know, in terms of what operationally can you do, I think you need to get as many
00:33:50.800
of your neighbors, you know, to either put in mail-in ballots or commit to show up that day.
00:33:56.800
And on election day, if you can take the day off and you can help drive people there, that'd
00:34:04.060
You can strike up conversations with your neighbors or with people you meet.
00:34:10.760
Because I look at the laws in some places like Georgia, and they got better with signature
00:34:17.260
And with ending Zuckerbuck's in Georgia, for instance.
00:34:22.260
But then I look at Maricopa County, Arizona, and I can't really point to a lot of major
00:34:28.820
And then I look at Pennsylvania, and it almost feels like they're going in the wrong direction.
00:34:32.680
So when you amalgamate it all together, I guess when people are watching these results
00:34:39.860
Well, I think people should use their common sense.
00:34:42.200
And I think that's what the way the American people reacted after the 2020 election, right?
00:34:48.020
Despite the fact that a media onslaught ensued, not just based on, you know, what the experts
00:34:57.140
The election was, it was the most pristine election, most secure election in U.S. history,
00:35:01.980
Even though they were violating all of the CISA protocols, even though they were violating
00:35:05.940
the computer requirements and the Help America Vote Act have, you know, and on and on.
00:35:11.640
They tried to tell us it was the most secure election.
00:35:15.400
And they even didn't believe it after they tried to strike fear into the hearts of Americans
00:35:19.760
by trying to string up anyone who went to the January 6th protest, whether they were
00:35:24.000
engaged in the riot or not, just setting foot in the secured area, many of which, you know,
00:35:29.520
people didn't even know it was a secured area because the fencing and signs had been knocked
00:35:35.080
So, you know, I think continue to exercise common sense when you look at this.
00:35:40.180
If we see another shutdown of counting in the middle of the night, you know, I hope the American
00:35:47.000
And I think this time, you know, I think the Supreme Court did not want to touch the 2020
00:35:52.800
But I think what happened in the immunity decision that was issued by the Supreme Court
00:35:56.900
on July 1st, I think the chief justice has had enough of this lawfare.
00:36:01.720
And I think that this time, you know, if there's a big case that comes to the Supreme Court,
00:36:07.540
gives them a chance to rule on the 2024 election because it looks like it's been stolen a second
00:36:17.240
I hope that, you know, we flood the system that, as the saying is going, you know, on
00:36:29.080
But, you know, there is a better legal strategy, I think, and better legal preparations than
00:36:34.880
But, you know, I guess I would rather have seen it be 100 times stronger than it's been.
00:36:40.560
I mean, I'm just going to be straight with people.
00:36:43.820
You know, on a scale of 1 to 10 on election integrity, not based on like the third world,
00:36:49.920
but based on where America should be, I feel like we're at about a three and a half or a
00:36:56.620
And I feel like now, you know, maybe we're at like a five, five and a half.
00:37:01.360
I really don't think we have made the requisite reforms, particularly to the mail voting, where
00:37:08.200
we're certain that the ballots that are being tabulated were indeed intended to be cast
00:37:15.920
And, you know, a lot of the people who watch this program, you're engaged, you're involved.
00:37:20.600
But what you need to know is that the survival of the republic depends on folks a lot smarter
00:37:26.960
than us, technocrats who study these things, who work on these things.
00:37:31.360
And then who are who are resilient in the crucible moment when it's really on the line.
00:37:40.880
He's a patriot for our country because when he saw things weren't going well, he could
00:37:47.560
And by the way, if that were the case, he'd be making three times the salary at one of
00:37:52.040
the Ivy League, you know, white white shoe law firms here in Washington, D.C.
00:37:58.220
But he wanted to be a voice for our institutions.
00:38:03.940
He wanted to be a voice for the institutional capacity to deal with these irregularities
00:38:08.980
that we were seeing and the concerns that legitimately needed to be evaluated.
00:38:19.220
And this this film, Fearless at the Point of Attack, Center for Renewing America, it
00:38:24.300
really chronicles what happens to the people that you have to rely on if you want a safe
00:38:30.440
And, you know, this this is not a political show.
00:38:34.420
But the policies that we want to see at the Department of Justice are in line with what
00:38:38.980
you just heard Jeff describe, where the Department of Justice isn't some like unaccountable
00:38:43.740
thing out there, but it is actually part of the executive branch and that it's fulfilling
00:38:47.960
the mandate that the executive achieves through a free and fair election.
00:38:52.960
Jeff, I want to give you the last word, give you the chance to talk about where folks can
00:38:56.400
follow you on on X and continue to be supportive of all you're doing for the country.
00:39:03.780
I really appreciate it and your contributions to the to the movie.
00:39:07.000
So the Center for Renewing America, again, is at America Renewing dot com.
00:39:10.720
I am at Jeff Clark U.S. on X and on Getter and at Real Jeff Clark on Truth Social.
00:39:20.560
Can I can I ask, you know, if any of your viewers see fit to do it, to send either prayers
00:39:25.140
or contributions to give send go dot com slash Jeff Clark.
00:39:33.520
Because, you know, at this point, the legal bills, they're just they're enormous and they
00:39:37.480
spread across six different forums since they started unleashing these attacks against me
00:39:46.880
And we would ask all of you to be relentless as well.