Opinion by Ruth Marcus
Deputy editorial page editor
Yesterday at 5:11 p.m. EDT
Jeffrey Clark asked the attorney general for a lift on the way to topple him.
It was Sunday evening, Jan. 3. Clark, a previously obscure Justice Department official, had caught President Trump’s eye as a willing accomplice in seeking to overturn the election results — a role that Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, had shown he was unwilling to play.
So Trump, meeting with Clark behind Rosen’s back, had offered to install him in the top job. Clark, then the acting head of the civil division — and a colleague of Rosen’s stretching back decades in government and private practice — told Rosen he’d let him stay on, as the department’s number two.
Now, Rosen and Clark were headed to the White House for a hastily scheduled showdown with the president. Could Clark get a ride in the AG’s motorcade?
ADVERTISING
“Maybe this was ungracious of me, but I declined,” Rosen told Senate Judiciary Committee investigators in an interview transcript released Thursday.
Rosen calls Jan. 6 attack a ‘tragic episode in our nation's history’
Acting attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen on Jan. 12 strongly condemned the U.S. Capitol attack, adding that the "wrongdoers will be held responsible." (The Justice Department)
The interviews, with Rosen and others, were included in a committee report that offers new details — some amusing, others chilling — of the slow-motion coup gathering steam inside the Trump administration even before the public insurrection of Jan. 6. The new material underscores the imperative of hearing from Clark himself. What did the president say to him in their private meetings? How did Clark get connected with Rep. Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican who introduced him to Trump? Who else was involved? The last best hope of obtaining Clark’s testimony appears to be the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
As outlined in the report, the White House meeting opened with Trump brazenly summarizing the choice before him. “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election,” Trump said, according to Rosen. Let that sink in: A sitting president, in the Oval Office no less, announcing that he wants an attorney general who will use the Justice Department to undo the will of the voters.
Specifically, Clark was willing to do what Rosen wouldn’t: send a letter to officials in Georgia — to be replicated with other contested states — declaring that the Justice Department had “taken notice” of “irregularities” in the election and calling on the state to convene a special session of the legislature. This was so preposterously outside the department’s purview that Rosen had summarily refused Clark’s entreaties. Clark, for his part, told Rosen that he’d turn down Trump’s offer to become attorney general if Rosen would simply send the letters himself.
The assembled group included the White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy, Patrick Philbin; Steven A. Engel, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; Rosen deputy Richard Donoghue — wearing an Army T-shirt and muddy from a walk on the National Mall — and another White House adviser.
Cipollone, describing the proposed letter as a “murder-suicide pact,” warned that he and his deputy would quit if Rosen were fired. Donoghue and Engel said they’d resign as well, along with the rest of the department’s political hierarchy.
The lineup was six to one in Rosen’s favor. “Jeff Clark was advocating for Jeff Clark becoming the acting attorney general,” Donoghue recalled. “Everyone else in the room was adamantly opposed to the president taking that step.” With Clark sitting there, “we discussed whether Jeff Clark was even qualified to serve as the acting attorney general.”
Trump, he said, “would say things like, ‘Well, what do I have to lose? What would I lose at this point if I put Jeff Clark in?’ ” Even after Trump concluded, in the final minutes of the meeting, that firing Rosen and installing Clark was “going to be a disaster,” Clark persisted, according to Donoghue.
“At that point, Jeff Clark tried to get the president to change his mind,” Donoghue said. “He kept saying, ‘Mr. President, we can do this. We can get it done. History is calling.’ Things like that.” Amazingly, Trump comes off as the more rational actor, Clark as an eager lackey who spied an otherwise unimaginable opportunity before him.
Committee Republicans’ response to all this boils down to no-harm/no foul. In the end Trump didn’t fire Rosen or order department officials to take actions with which they disagreed; therefore, the GOP logic goes, there’s no reason for worry and no problem with Trump’s conduct.
“President Trump listened to his advisers, including high-level DOJ officials and White House Counsel and followed their recommendations,” committee Republicans write in their gauzy version of reality. “President Trump expressed concerns related to the U.S. electoral system writ large rather than concerns about his campaign or himself personally.”
Right. Sure. And what happens next time, if there is one, when there aren’t people with the backbone of a Rosen or Donoghue to stand up to a president, when Trump, or a Trump-like figure, surrounds himself only with the Jeffrey Clarks of the world?
Deputy editorial page editor
Yesterday at 5:11 p.m. EDT
Jeffrey Clark asked the attorney general for a lift on the way to topple him.
It was Sunday evening, Jan. 3. Clark, a previously obscure Justice Department official, had caught President Trump’s eye as a willing accomplice in seeking to overturn the election results — a role that Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general, had shown he was unwilling to play.
So Trump, meeting with Clark behind Rosen’s back, had offered to install him in the top job. Clark, then the acting head of the civil division — and a colleague of Rosen’s stretching back decades in government and private practice — told Rosen he’d let him stay on, as the department’s number two.
Now, Rosen and Clark were headed to the White House for a hastily scheduled showdown with the president. Could Clark get a ride in the AG’s motorcade?
ADVERTISING
“Maybe this was ungracious of me, but I declined,” Rosen told Senate Judiciary Committee investigators in an interview transcript released Thursday.
Rosen calls Jan. 6 attack a ‘tragic episode in our nation's history’
Acting attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen on Jan. 12 strongly condemned the U.S. Capitol attack, adding that the "wrongdoers will be held responsible." (The Justice Department)
The interviews, with Rosen and others, were included in a committee report that offers new details — some amusing, others chilling — of the slow-motion coup gathering steam inside the Trump administration even before the public insurrection of Jan. 6. The new material underscores the imperative of hearing from Clark himself. What did the president say to him in their private meetings? How did Clark get connected with Rep. Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican who introduced him to Trump? Who else was involved? The last best hope of obtaining Clark’s testimony appears to be the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
As outlined in the report, the White House meeting opened with Trump brazenly summarizing the choice before him. “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election,” Trump said, according to Rosen. Let that sink in: A sitting president, in the Oval Office no less, announcing that he wants an attorney general who will use the Justice Department to undo the will of the voters.
Specifically, Clark was willing to do what Rosen wouldn’t: send a letter to officials in Georgia — to be replicated with other contested states — declaring that the Justice Department had “taken notice” of “irregularities” in the election and calling on the state to convene a special session of the legislature. This was so preposterously outside the department’s purview that Rosen had summarily refused Clark’s entreaties. Clark, for his part, told Rosen that he’d turn down Trump’s offer to become attorney general if Rosen would simply send the letters himself.
The assembled group included the White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy, Patrick Philbin; Steven A. Engel, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; Rosen deputy Richard Donoghue — wearing an Army T-shirt and muddy from a walk on the National Mall — and another White House adviser.
Cipollone, describing the proposed letter as a “murder-suicide pact,” warned that he and his deputy would quit if Rosen were fired. Donoghue and Engel said they’d resign as well, along with the rest of the department’s political hierarchy.
The lineup was six to one in Rosen’s favor. “Jeff Clark was advocating for Jeff Clark becoming the acting attorney general,” Donoghue recalled. “Everyone else in the room was adamantly opposed to the president taking that step.” With Clark sitting there, “we discussed whether Jeff Clark was even qualified to serve as the acting attorney general.”
Trump, he said, “would say things like, ‘Well, what do I have to lose? What would I lose at this point if I put Jeff Clark in?’ ” Even after Trump concluded, in the final minutes of the meeting, that firing Rosen and installing Clark was “going to be a disaster,” Clark persisted, according to Donoghue.
“At that point, Jeff Clark tried to get the president to change his mind,” Donoghue said. “He kept saying, ‘Mr. President, we can do this. We can get it done. History is calling.’ Things like that.” Amazingly, Trump comes off as the more rational actor, Clark as an eager lackey who spied an otherwise unimaginable opportunity before him.
Committee Republicans’ response to all this boils down to no-harm/no foul. In the end Trump didn’t fire Rosen or order department officials to take actions with which they disagreed; therefore, the GOP logic goes, there’s no reason for worry and no problem with Trump’s conduct.
“President Trump listened to his advisers, including high-level DOJ officials and White House Counsel and followed their recommendations,” committee Republicans write in their gauzy version of reality. “President Trump expressed concerns related to the U.S. electoral system writ large rather than concerns about his campaign or himself personally.”
Right. Sure. And what happens next time, if there is one, when there aren’t people with the backbone of a Rosen or Donoghue to stand up to a president, when Trump, or a Trump-like figure, surrounds himself only with the Jeffrey Clarks of the world?
