AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ERROR: Newly unsealed court docs reveal manuscript full of January 6th evidence
Jeffrey Clark may not have known, as he drafted a manuscript that appears to have been for an autobiography, that the details he was spilling on Donald Trump, January 6th, and the various election interference schemes, would be examined by a court, rather than CPAC-attending book-buyers.
Now an unsealed opinion reveals the moment a judge decided these pages must be turned over to investigators.
Clark’s manuscript outlined Trump’s efforts to install him as acting attorney general, and Justice Department officials’ promise to quit en masse if the plan went through.
Trump was reportedly frustrated that Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting attorney general at the time, would not help him in efforts to pressure officials to overturn their state’s election outcomes.
Along with the manuscript, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell ruled in June that 37 of Clark’s emails were not protected by attorney-client privilege.
These included contact with Trump allies such as John Eastman (dubbed the “Coup Memo Attorney” for his notes on ways Trump could potentially successfully overturn the election) and Representative Scott Perry (R-PA).
Not many details of the contents of those emails and the manuscript have been released, but the Justice Department’s push for the order to be unsealed is a hint at increasing transparency as investigations progress.
Clark is one of several people close to Trump who has been seen as central to proving the former president’s connections to the election schemes. POLITICO reports:
Clark’s legal team waded into the fight over the apparent book outline. But Howell seemed to disapprove of aspects of the approach Clark’s lawyers took to the document dispute, describing their strategy at one point as “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.”
The White House meeting in which Trump, Rosen, Clark, and DOJ officials delved into what would happen if the then-president took as blatant an action as replacing an acting attorney general who wouldn’t help with his coup attempt with one who would, underscored Trump’s determination to walk away with an unearned win, and the equal (or greater) determination of top officials to keep things in check to the greatest extent possible. The New York Times reported on it shortly after Trump left office:
“Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.”
At the time, Clark claimed that descriptions of the meeting were inaccurate, but would not say how — and the unsealed order shows that investigators now have a description of the day’s events in his own words.
