Feds search home of former DOJ official Trump sought to install as AG: reports
Federal law enforcement this week searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, the former Department of Justice (DOJ) official accused of trying to use the agency to pursue former President Trump’s election fraud allegations, multiple news outlets reported Thursday.
According to The New York Times, Clark’s suburban Virginia home was searched on Wednesday, a day before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack was set to hear from former DOJ officials about the internal strife in the Trump administration following the 2020 election.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. did not immediately respond when asked for comment on the reports.
Clark was central to Trump’s pressure campaign at the DOJ and Trump even weighed installing him as attorney general, according to previously released material.
The mid-level attorney, who specialized in environmental law and was acting head of the department’s civil division at the time, was one of Trump’s top advocates for forwarding election fraud claims. He pushed the DOJ to send a letter to Georgia asking it to hold off on certifying its election results so the Justice Department could announce an investigation into voter fraud there.
That pressure campaign came to a head at a Jan. 3, 2021, meeting in which Trump told his DOJ leadership he was weighing ousting them in favor of Clark, who had for days been pushing Trump allies’ claims about voter fraud.
Then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, were surprised to get an email from Clark prior to their White House meeting promoting “various theories that seemed to be derived from the internet,” according to Donoghue.
That included a theory that the Chinese government may have hacked into Dominion voting machines through a smart thermostat. He followed with a request for an intelligence community briefing on the matter along with the request to send the letter to Georgia elections officials.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3534585-feds-search-home-of-former-doj-official-trump-sought-to-install-as-ag-reports/