It is a sad, borderline tragic commentary on modern American life that fewer and fewer of our countrymen would recognize Thomas Jefferson’s timeless words offering a solemn coda to our Declaration of Independence: “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Today such famous canonical phrases (even among the educated professions) of America’s legal pantheon go often unrecognized with scandalous and increasing regularity. But rarer still is the individual who not only recognizes but acts upon the animating spirit behind Jefferson’s words.
This describes the type of political man (an endangered species in our times), who has made it his personal philosophy to live by them, to the best of his abilities, day in and day out, despite the terrific personal and professional costs of doing so. For this group one can probably count on one hand the number of lawyers, the supposed vanguard of American law and justice, who still adhere to that national creed. (And, correspondingly, discover where the origins of so many of our societal afflictions, particularly in the legal arena, lie).
Jeff Clark, former Assistant Attorney General under President Trump, who dared to do the unthinkable and actually remain loyal to his former boss during a period of unprecedented political turmoil in the lead-up and immediate aftermath of the 2020 presidential contest belongs to that latter group. Originally a Philadelphia native Clark went to Harvard for his undergraduate studies where he majored in history — and portentously, the history of the Soviet legal system under communism. Law school followed Harvard. Following undergraduate, Clark migrated from Boston to Washington, DC, to attend Georgetown. It was during his time in law school where he met his future wife, whom he later married and with whom had four children. He eventually would make the decision to settle down in that same city, surely knowing even at the start of his professional life that he was destined for a career in public service. Following Georgetown, Clark served as a clerk on the Sixth Circuit under Judge Danny J. Boggs (a Reagan appointee), and then returned to DC working himself all the way up to partner at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the most prestigious white shoe law firms in the country. In short, Jeff Clark had a picture perfect legal career.
And though he resided in the Swamp for most of his adult life, Clark never succumbed to it. Unlike so many of his peers, Clark served under two Republican presidents, serving two separate stints at the Department of Justice, never selling himself out to DC’s countless innumerable special interests. From 2001-2005, he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division under George Bush. This was a post that he would later upgrade to US Assistant Attorney General for that same division under President Trump, a little over a decade later, in which he served from 2018 until 2021. Until the November 2020 election (whose events and immediate aftermath sent his professional career spiraling) Clark’s body of work was defined by his devotion to the Constitution and his love of lawyering.
Many lawyers begrudge the day-to-day clerical work of the job. Not Jeff Clark. In speaking with him, one immediately senses that he is the quintessential “lawyer’s lawyer,” one of the rare lawyers who genuinely loves the job of lawyering. As a devout and lifelong Catholic, Jeff Clark’s convictions in the law are doubtlessly entwined with his faith. As far as his profession goes, Clark is the type of lawyer that could convince even an atheist that certain men are divinely ordained by God, from birth, to serve a particular vocation — and for Jeff Clark, that vocation was being a lawyer. Having a true love for one’s vocation often always is a wellspring for greatness, whatever that vocation might be. And Clark’s career trajectory proves that rule in spades.
Clark’s backstory lends further support to the lawyer-by-birth theory: he himself concedes that the type of analytical reasoning lawyers engage in was intuitive to him from a young age. He took to the profession as an athlete does to sport. When he got to Georgetown, he aced his law school exams with ease; in practice, he unspools his opponent’s erroneous arguments with Olympian deftness. He cuts through dicta and fluff like the sword of a legal ninja.
His persecution at the hand of a megalomaniacal government, one on the brink of full-fledged tyranny, is uncannily reminiscent of another lawyer, St. Thomas More, the Catholic saint who was similarly persecuted for upholding the truth in the face of dark opposition (and later canonized by the Church for what he did). While Clark, a humble man, may shy away from comparisons between himself and More’s literal martyrdom, this writers thinks the comparison apropos, and not only because each involves the persecution of a great lawyer, who stood up for truth despite having every incentive on earth not to. But there are also spiritual parallels between each case – in the sixteenth century, it was a Christian lawyer against a secular (and, as Catholics see it, heretical) king. In our times, those who most ardently uphold America’s political creed, like Jeff Clark, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump, tend to also be if not saints, then at least men of deep-seated beliefs about right and wrong, justice and injustice, who respect the traditional morality out of which both Constitution and Country was carved.
It is the moral boundaries laid down by religious convictions, sincere and practiced in the lives of the faithful, that make freedom possible in the first place. So, it is no surprise, then, that someone with Clark’s moral temperament would equally take umbrage – and sense the injustice perhaps more deeply than most – of those actors who betrayed Donald Trump during that most fateful 2020 election. Accordingly, it makes perfects sense for Clark to be the type to step up, foreseeing the ominous waters in which the ship of state was sailing into at a moment of crisis, and take action over and above those who could not see beyond their own selfish desires, preferring to preserve their own hide, country be damned.
* * * * *
Fearless at the Point of Attack: the Jeff Clark Story is a new documentary produced by the Center for Renewing America, a Washington DC-based conservative policy institute, aided by the support of Steve Bannon’s War Room films. Over the course of the 30-minute film the saga of Clark’s professional and personal nightmare of the last four years is fleshed out, in all its harrowing and at times even absurd detail. CRA’s documentary of Clark’s life story, a story that Clark himself has frequently related to engaged listeners in speaking events over the past four years, is the first time it has been brought to the silver screen. And, boy, does it deliver!
With special commentary from a litany of conservative A-listers including Steve Bannon, Russ Vought (former director of OMB under Trump), Congressman Matt Gaetz, and Harry MacDougald (Clark’s lawyer) – along with Clark himself – plus clips from Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News show — viewers get a firsthand look at the real human cost of having a weaponized justice system. Viewers get a visceral sense of how that system can and has destroyed the livelihood (if not life) of a real man, who was simply acting out his duties – and faithfully, as he saw it — adhering to his constitutional oath.
Clark’s reality is certainly not the first, and far from the worst, of the heavy-handed treatment exacted upon those accused of the high crime of remaining loyal (an utter blasphemy in the eyes of DC’s legal establishment) to President Trump, particularly when it was expedient – politically, professionally, financially – to rat at the moment of greatest uncertainty – i.e., the lead-up and aftermath of the November of 2020 ordeal.
“To see my profession weaponized and tortured in such a manner – it’s really painful,” Congressman Gaetz says in the film. “It makes me feel empty about the work of my life some days when I see what’s happening to people like President Trump and Jeff Clark.”
Clark, however, is one of the few DC lawyers actually made of sterner stuff. And this is readily depicted on screen. Despite years of being ritualistically humiliated and dressed down (literally) by the Justice Department and intelligence agencies, which even included a home raid by the DOJ’s Inspector General Office, Clark has no qualms about what he did – and would probably do it all over again if necessary.
“President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” Clark says in the film. “At all times his actions were entirely proper and motivated by a desire to uphold the law and the Constitution.” It is true: Clark remained loyal when so many of his peers defected, and when the pressure to defect – particularly by mainstream media outside the White House, and effective mutineers within was at its highest. Thus, at the point when many of his peers in the Justice Department attempted to undermine the President and his plan to merely execute what basically amounted to a procedural formality, Clark held firm. What was being asked of him, as the film chronicles, should not have been particularly controversial, let alone incriminating. Plainly stated, Clark’s role was basically a legal deep dive into finding out whether the vice president had the legal authority to – not, as foolish media talking heads falsely proclaim, “overturn an election” – but rather, simply ask state legislatures to reconsider allegations of fraud in hotspots of electoral contention like Fulton County, Georgia. That’s it.
Under the Constitution, states have plenary or exclusive power to administer election rules and procedures. To the extent the federal government, or Congress, ever gets involved, it is as an advisory or ministerial role – to clear up controversies and guide states to conduct their proceedings in a timely fashion. To the extent controversies still remain unresolved after the fact, for instance, such as in a case where a state legislature cannot decide between two competing slates of electors, then Congress has authority to square away the differences, and then upon reviewing the evidence could proceed to certify the slate of electors it deems most legitimate.
Clark’s own role was pretty narrow: simply investigate the situation in Georgia – and if there were problems, provide his legal expertise. He was asked by President Trump to request for state officials there to take account of additional evidence of irregularities and outcome-determinative fraud that impacted the results of the 2020 race (claims of which were widespread then, and now, after four long and grueling years of legal battles, we know existed in overwhelming amounts). As testimony to his brains and loyalty, Clark actually wound up being tapped by President Trump to serve as Acting Attorney General, over an intense, 9-hour period on January 3, 2021, where he wound up leading the entire Justice Department. This he did as other senior officials within both the DOJ and the White House Counsel’s Office hightailed themselves out of controversy, abandoning their Captain when he needed them most, leaving Clark as the last man standing within the DOJ.
Clark’s loyalty (to both Constitution and President) – which, as the documentary makes crystal clear, is the sole basis for his criminal liability – immediately made him a target for DOJ officials in the post-Trump era. These four years, some of the bleakest yet to bear in modern American history, amounted to a protracted requiem for the rule of law in America. The charges against Clark, specifically – resulting in the criminal investigation in Georgia, where Clark is one of the famous co-conspirators implicated in Fani Willis’ sham proceeding there – in addition to a separate disbarment saga in Washington DC, are downright egregious, whose absurdities the film does a good job of unpacking.
The greatest absurdity of all might have been the fact that the letter detailing Clark’s legal advice to Georgia state officials was never even sent in the first place! Not that the advice Clark offered (later published in the New York Times) – which otherwise reads like any ordinary legal memorandum instructing Georgia state officials in constitutional law – basically, a rundown of Article II coupled with a brief legal history of the Electors Clause – was in the slightest bit damning, and far from illegal. But it underlines how ludicrous the whole affair is: Clark is given the treatment of a criminal felon and has even been indicted all for an unsent legal memo! Of course, in our perverse age, faithful interpretation of the Constitution, in accordance with its intended, textual and original meaning, is liable to get any decent lawyer into trouble with the law. Why? Because under the current regime, any law that conflicts with those rules established by the powers that be is ispo facto illegal, and thus punishable without recourse to ethics, rules of evidence and procedure, or traditional legal codes of any sort.
As a practitioner of law in Washington’s Swamp, Clark naturally found himself in the crosshairs of the iniquitous January 6th Special Committee, that slipshod medley of some of the most self-hating and vindictive lawmakers in America. The J6 Committee’s shameless disregard of law and procedure, a Herculean subject worthy of its own separate analysis, puts Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee from the early 1950s to shame. The film relates how the J6 Committee was Orwellian in relying on Stasi-like subterfuge by producing groundless documents with sternly menacing titles, like “Subverting Justice,” that gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “Witch Hunt.” The grand takeaway is one of how justice in America might be so brazenly wielded like a sword against political dissidents and opponents; their crimes, only vaguely defined and with little grounding in fact or law, making their counterclaims impossible to defend – Constitution, due process, and presumption of innocence be damned along the way.
Joseph McCarthy’s Committee of the 1950s, for all its countless asserted improprieties, nevertheless abided by sensible congressional rules and norms with respect to issuance of subpoenas, partisanship composition, and scope of mandate. Nancy Pelosi’s latter-day impersonator, by sharp contrast, flouted with shameless abandon all such customs, rules, and norms, making mincemeat of the rule of law in the process. Whatever his failings might have been, Joe McCarthy is an angel compared to Nancy Pelosi – and we, as a society, are all suffering the consequences for it.
Rather than adhere to an intensive, fact-finding operation that rigorously upholds our nation’s legal customs, cultivated over centuries, the J6 Committee took its marching orders instead from mainstream media like MSNBC and The Washington Post, de facto mouthpieces of the deep state. These purveyors of propaganda paraded the bogus claim that the events of January 6th, 2021, constituted a “political insurrection” (even though it hardly qualified as a riot at its most heated moment) – and thus any and all enablers (read: Trump supporters) automatically became enemies of the state.
This in turn granted federal authorities absolute and unprecedented power to deny their fundamental rights without legal recourse. Why? Because the powers-that-be wanted it that way, and plainly do not care for the text of the Constitution. Nancy’s “committee” would thus provide the template by which card-carrying political operators could masquerade as prosecutors, Attorneys General, and District Attorneys in states like Georgia, New York, and Washington – waging their very own insurrection against those political castaways who dared to not only hold, but act upon, convictions antithetical with the only accepted political ideology of the regime itself. Because Clark found himself not only holding opinions contrary to those deemed acceptable, but also remaining loyal to the President, he was seen as having entered territory that virtually no other lawyer would enter. And so, for having the temerity to act upon those beliefs as well – he, only naturally, found himself as a person of interest, nay co-conspirator, in the eyes of both Fani Willis and Jack Smith, two of Merrick Garland’s most zealous attack dogs.
As the documentary tells, the charges lodged at Clark were as makeshift and far-fetched as the criminal activity for which he allegedly was responsible itself. “The January 6th Committee is the worst abomination and the worst abuse of congressional investigative authority in the history of the United States,” inveighs Clark’s lawyer, Harry MacDougald. And he’s absolutely correct. The string of abuses by the Committee, too many to elaborate here, helped inform the ham-handed charges against Clark by the DC Bar Association, which has embarked on a relentless crusade to disbar and destroy the former Assistant Attorney General.
The first charge, as the film details, was “attempted dishonesty,” a “crime” so nebulous and divorced from any workable legal standard as to be practicably impossible to prove in a court of law, let alone treat seriously. “I encourage your viewers to try to figure out what that could possibly mean,” declares MacDougald in the film, reiterating the absurd lengths by which lawyering can be weaponized for political gain. The second charge, “attempted serious interference with the administration of justice,” also drives home the ridiculousness of Clark’s legal imbroglio. The charges themselves, being classified as “attempt” “crimes” (in other words, no criminal action was taken), betrays the increasingly kangaroo nature of American justice that Jeff Clark’s legal proceedings encapsulate overall.
As the film goes onto explain, Clark had his private home raided by federal agents, and now is on the verge of losing his law license because he “attempted” to (that is to say, never did) mail a legal memo to explain, as a matter of duty, to Georgia state officials. At which point Clark notified them about irregularities the DOJ was made aware of (now, apparently, a high crime and misdemeanor in the land of the free) regarding election procedures in the lead-up and immediate aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. In short, Jeff Clark’s unsent letter offering the most innocuous (and candidly, banal) legal advice one can possibly conceive implicated him in a criminal conspiracy and a years-long disbarment proceeding. That’s it. That’s the crime.
There’s an old, famous line from Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s longest serving secret police chief, who said: “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” In a banana republic, it is an unfortunate truth that justice and the rule of law often take a backseat to man’s less noble proclivities, where the forces of envy and vindictiveness, to say nothing of retribution, overtake the better angels in man’s nature – and society overall – that subordinate selfish passions for the greater good.
Rebuking the evils present in every man’s heart are lawyers like Jeff Clark, who is a consummate professional; his example is one that should establish the model for integrity for every lawyer in our profession. On merit, he is a first rank intellectual – one of the increasingly rare non-DEI types in our times who miraculously slipped through the cracks and found himself in an important government office. Clark is the type who understands, believes in, and knows how to adeptly and fairly apply the rule of law and administer justice in accordance with the intent, spirit, and letter of the Constitutional text. It is unthinkable that any high-ranking DOJ official within the Biden administration has the acumen to take on not one, but two separate divisions within the DOJ all by himself, as Clark did, and then, at a moment’s notice, take on the entire department upon being called to do so by the President, as Clark did as well.
These types across society are sadly now few and far between. Therefore, his model is one that should be exalted by the rest of us for how good lawyering used to be – and ought to be again.
Clark’s ordeal furthermore demonstrates how the qualities of commitment and loyalty might look in our own debased times — as well as the near-superhuman ability to not break down in the face of tremendous adversity and pressure upon him. Today these virtues are so rare, not just among lawyers or government officials, but across society writ large.
That Jeffrey Bossert Clark has not only endured, but persevered despite those years-long trials and tribulations (which are still ongoing by the way) is the ultimate mark of his sterling character, defined by a tenacity of spirit that puts him among an elite and sadly diminishing class of lawyers of the first rank. This is the quality about Clark, his dogged faith – to God and country alike – that, even more than his preternatural legal mind, distinguishes him as a genuine leader and statesman – the archetype for an Attorney General or Supreme Court Justice that any political movement worth its salt would be proud to claim as one of its own.
Paul Ingrassia, a graduate of Fordham University and Cornell Law School, is an Attorney; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the NYYR Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow Paul on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.