The Michael Knowles Show - August 25, 2024


＂They Treat You Like The Mob＂ Libs Try To JAIL Trump Teams ｜ Jeff Clark


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

170.1837

Word count

2,242

Sentence count

124

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jeff Clark is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Renewing America and was a Senate Confirmed Assistant Attorney General under President Donald Trump. He has been targeted by the left for his conservative views, and is fighting back.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 I am joined now by Jeff Clark, who is a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America,
00:00:06.660 who was a Senate-confirmed assistant attorney general under President Trump,
00:00:11.820 and who is being targeted and persecuted by the left.
00:00:15.220 The left wants to remove Mr. Clark's law license,
00:00:18.420 or at least revoke his ability to practice as a lawyer for some number of years,
00:00:22.200 all because he had the temerity to represent his clients,
00:00:25.640 all because he had the temerity to raise objections to what he felt were improper election activities,
00:00:34.560 all because he, I don't know, all because he was a good lawyer, a conservative good lawyer?
00:00:39.520 Yeah, I guess that's a crime today.
00:00:40.900 Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:00:43.680 Well, Michael, thanks for having me.
00:00:45.980 So, Jeff, if you could, I'm sure you've recounted this a billion times,
00:00:49.860 but, you know, there's a media blackout on a lot of the lawfare and political persecution
00:00:54.780 surrounding President Trump's associates.
00:00:57.740 What are they doing to you?
00:01:00.140 Sure. Well, look, I'm a target in Jack Smith's January 6th case, so-called, in D.C.,
00:01:07.800 where I'm an unindicted co-conspirator.
00:01:09.620 I'm one of the indicted RICO co-conspirators under Georgia RICO by Fonnie Willis down in Atlanta.
00:01:17.340 And the D.C. bar is trying to suspend my license for two years at this point.
00:01:22.400 So, it's been, you know, a constant legal battle across multiple fronts,
00:01:28.020 especially because I removed the Fonnie Willis case to federal court, still fighting about that,
00:01:33.460 still haven't gotten an oral argument in that appeal in front of the 11th Circuit.
00:01:36.640 I removed the bar case against me, too.
00:01:39.940 That's reached the stage where I'm going to be filing an en banc petition.
00:01:44.300 So, you know, I have more legal proceedings than you can shake a stick at, Michael.
00:01:48.460 So, they're accusing you, though not quite indicting you, of being a co-conspirator in this federal case.
00:01:55.920 Then, they're lumping you in with Al Capone in a RICO case that they're implausibly waging against Trump.
00:02:02.560 And, amid all of this, they're going after you because you had the temerity to be a lawyer for Trump.
00:02:07.200 Amid all of this, they're trying to stop you from being a lawyer.
00:02:09.780 So, it's three different attacks.
00:02:11.660 One, how are you fighting back?
00:02:16.800 And two, regardless of any individual aspect of any of these cases, I think most reasonable people would agree,
00:02:24.180 it's not good to prosecute people for being good lawyers or for representing the President of the United States
00:02:31.900 or for working at the Department of Justice and just doing your job.
00:02:35.480 And so, how do we solve the meta-political problem here?
00:02:39.780 The problem that's not just about one side or the other, but that seems to threaten the whole political system.
00:02:45.380 Well, I think it is a problem, Michael, that threatens the entire political system.
00:02:49.800 It's one that goes after lawyers because lawyers are the ones who joust on behalf of clients in the courts of law
00:02:56.520 in order that we, you know, have our adversary system function.
00:03:00.900 If one side is targeted and destroyed, then you get, you know, UNI results, right?
00:03:06.880 You get a UNI party, you get a UNI state, you get, you know, a UNI bar.
00:03:14.340 And if you have that, right, you're not able to use the legal system to hash things out,
00:03:20.240 either as a matter of factual conflicts or legal conflicts.
00:03:23.940 And, you know, you just wind up with the powers that be solidifying their power further.
00:03:28.960 So, you know, the way they've painted it, they're trying to save democracy.
00:03:33.280 But in reality, what they're really doing is that they have an aristocracy,
00:03:37.740 and that aristocracy is what they're desperate to want to try to preserve.
00:03:41.840 And you ask, well, how can we fight against that?
00:03:44.700 You know, I've talked to several individuals who realize that we need to have a series of projects on the right
00:03:51.160 that are like this thing the left started called the 65 Project that is going after lawyers to try to destroy them in their communities,
00:04:00.460 render their names toxic.
00:04:02.440 You know, we need to have similar things that are going to push back from the conservative direction against Democrats and their allies.
00:04:12.180 And if we don't have that kind of thing, they're not going to stop.
00:04:15.260 They're going to just keep trying to strip people of their licenses, 0.87
00:04:19.000 and they file complaint after complaint after complaint.
00:04:22.020 It's really a republic-ending process if we don't nip it in the bud and stop it soon.
00:04:29.500 What are the specific charges that they're making against you in all of these cases,
00:04:34.920 in D.C., in Georgia, and then even with the bar trying to boot you out from being a lawyer for some years?
00:04:42.180 So the bar has two charges, one of which recently a hearing committee,
00:04:47.480 which consists of three volunteers, two lawyers, and a layperson, which I contend is an unconstitutional process.
00:04:54.000 I don't understand how they can wield government power when they're not even taking oaths of office,
00:04:59.060 when they haven't been appointed in accord with the appointments clause.
00:05:02.500 But in any event, they recommended that my license be suspended for two years.
00:05:06.500 There were two charges before them, one of which they rejected.
00:05:09.300 That's the charge that essentially what I had proposed inside the Justice Department would have created profound damage to the legal system.
00:05:20.360 And that's the – despite the fact that what I proposed actually never left the Justice Department.
00:05:26.900 It never left the White House Oval Office.
00:05:29.240 It never went to Georgia.
00:05:30.820 So it is an unsent letter.
00:05:32.780 And as far as we can determine, no one has ever been disciplined for an unsent letter.
00:05:36.740 Hold on, Jeff, I got to pause you there.
00:05:39.180 I'm sorry, I have to – because I don't know.
00:05:41.940 I'm not sure.
00:05:42.760 People listening might not appreciate what you just said.
00:05:46.260 You drafted a letter articulating your legal view on behalf of your client.
00:05:54.500 You drafted a letter, might as well have just put it in a drawer and locked it up.
00:05:59.360 And because of a letter you drafted – because, I don't know, I could make a note on my iPhone in my Notes app.
00:06:06.500 They want to revoke your law license for drafting a letter?
00:06:13.600 Yes.
00:06:14.300 And it's absurd.
00:06:15.940 Sorry for laughing.
00:06:16.680 I shouldn't laugh.
00:06:17.220 Yeah.
00:06:17.700 No, I understand.
00:06:18.500 Like, we've been, you know, doing the equivalent of laughing in hundreds – you know, we've reached more than 1,000 pages of briefing that I've worked on personally as well in this case.
00:06:29.620 And there are no cases where a theory like this has ever been tried for an unsent letter.
00:06:35.220 And as you point out, it does become equivalent to a thought crime, right?
00:06:38.980 So, you know, you propose a letter, it's debated internally, and then the letter is not sent.
00:06:44.700 You know, how can that possibly be either criminal or a disciplinable offense?
00:06:49.460 It's not.
00:06:50.000 It's ridiculous.
00:06:50.840 So that's the one charge.
00:06:52.380 And to their credit, they decided not to pursue that one.
00:06:55.480 But I'll tell you that the bar prosecutor equivalent, his so-called disciplinary counsel, at his closing argument at my trial, which concluded, you know, second week or so of April of this year,
00:07:06.580 he said that I was literally – I'm not making this up – I was literally – I am literally the gravest threat to the republic since the Confederacy in the Civil War.
00:07:18.180 And so at least the hearing committee said that that was hyperbole, and they rejected that theory.
00:07:24.080 So what is the other theory?
00:07:25.560 The other theory, get this, that theory which they did endorse, and that's the basis of their recommendation that I get suspended for two years, is that I engaged in attempted dishonesty.
00:07:36.580 And that's a real head-scratcher, too, because we can't really find cases of people engaging in attempted dishonesty as to letters that were never sent.
00:07:49.080 Sorry, Jeff, what is attempted dishonesty?
00:07:53.840 What are they even referring to?
00:07:55.220 So they're saying that the letter represented that the Justice Department had concerns about the 2020 election.
00:08:06.080 And they say that because several of my colleagues at the Justice Department disagreed with that and that they did not have concerns, therefore the department did not have concerns.
00:08:15.800 And therefore, by attempting to send the letter, which, again, was only debated and never sent, I was attempting to lie.
00:08:24.360 Now, this ignores several things, including the fact that for a portion of the day, a good portion of the day on January 3rd, 2021, I actually was the acting attorney general.
00:08:38.140 It's named by President Trump.
00:08:39.260 And so at that point, you know, I was the views of the Justice Department, right?
00:08:45.500 So I'm not attempting to lie.
00:08:47.740 All I was attempting to do was to put forward my view of the fact that Fulton County, Georgia, ran a terrible shot through with legal and factual errors election process in 2020.
00:09:01.780 So, obviously, as you just say, especially if you were the acting attorney, the actual, you know, head honcho at the DOJ for some period of time, it is not possible for you to articulate a view and for that view to be dishonest with regard to the views of the Justice Department because you are the Justice Department at that moment.
00:09:21.660 However.
00:09:22.180 Yes.
00:09:22.640 However, put that aside for a second.
00:09:24.120 Let's say that you were doing something dishonest, which, again, zero evidence that you did anything dishonest whatsoever.
00:09:29.980 But even the phrase attempted dishonesty, it would be like a little kid goes in, reaches into the cookie jar, takes a cookie.
00:09:37.720 And then mommy comes in and says, hey, did you take a cookie from the cookie jar? 0.95
00:09:42.620 And the kid thinks about saying no, but then says, yes, I did take a cookie from the cookie jar.
00:09:49.080 It would, well, you, the kid could be accused of attempting to potentially be dishonest, though ultimately he was honest.
00:09:58.200 So, the whole thing, as I understand it, is absurd because you're articulating a view that not only you believed, but which is obviously correct, and that millions and millions of Americans understand to be obviously correct.
00:10:10.360 But furthermore, the very thing they're accusing you of is a logical impossibility.
00:10:18.700 Either you're going to be dishonest or you're not going to be dishonest.
00:10:22.100 The success or failure of aforementioned dishonesty actually has nothing to do with it.
00:10:28.360 Jeff, I'm going to pull my hair out if I keep hearing what they're doing to you, and I'm out of time also.
00:10:35.280 So, I'm going to leave it there.
00:10:37.000 Just for the audience, where does it all stand?
00:10:40.680 I mean, how precarious is your situation right now, and how precarious is the situation of the other conservatives and Trump associates who are being persecuted?
00:10:49.640 Sure.
00:10:50.100 Well, look, they brought a new indictment recently in Arizona.
00:10:54.080 And so, you know, one of my colleagues in the Trump administration, Mark Meadows, he's not just in the Georgia case alongside President Trump and myself.
00:11:00.920 He's also in that Arizona case.
00:11:03.080 John Eastman is in that case.
00:11:04.380 John Eastman's license at the moment is revoked.
00:11:07.720 He's trying to get that reversed on appeal.
00:11:10.500 And the Georgia case, I think, is largely stalled.
00:11:15.440 We have an appeal going on to try to get Fannie Willis disqualified. 0.97
00:11:19.760 And that's in briefing.
00:11:21.420 We're about to file our reply brief in that next week, and then it'll be argued probably in December.
00:11:27.040 The bar situation is the one that's most troubling to me.
00:11:29.880 I obviously do not want to lose my bar license even for two years.
00:11:34.380 And so I have mounted an interlocutory appeal of that because there's an entire section of the Trump-US immunity decision from the Supreme Court that came out on July 1st that's about my work inside the Justice Department concerning the election.
00:11:49.180 And the Supreme Court held, you know, six to three, that that entire episode creates absolute immunity.
00:11:56.800 So I'm arguing that I'm part of that absolute immunity because if the president has absolute immunity for consulting with the Justice Department, if the D.C. bar can go after the other side of the conversation and try to disbar lawyers, the president's not going to get any answers.
00:12:10.720 And so the whole decision would make no sense if it didn't apply to me as well as to President Trump.
00:12:17.660 There are other immunity arguments I have as well that we think are well taken.
00:12:21.040 So we're trying to see if we can stop that.
00:12:23.620 But I think the game afoot, and I think they lined up the timing to try to do this, is to try to suspend my license on an interim basis while I go forward with appeals maybe circa October, right before the election, you know, coincidentally.
00:12:38.140 So it's all about election interference at some level too, Michael.
00:12:41.920 Of course, election interference because if you can, if you can take President Trump's lawyers off the table, if you can take them out of the game, then you're leaving him vulnerable at the time that he'll probably need his lawyers most.
00:12:56.000 That's a disturbing conclusion.
00:12:59.520 And unfortunately, I think you're totally right.
00:13:01.880 Jeff, we're going to continue to follow this and of course wish you the best in the meantime.
00:13:06.120 Thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:13:08.140 Thanks for having me, Michael.
00:13:09.680 I really appreciate it.