Feds Raid Home of DOJ Official Trump Wanted to Elevate to Help Overturn Election

Federal authorities on Wednesday raided the Virginia home of former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into the push to overturn the results of the 2020 election. News of the raid was reported Thursday afternoon and confirmed by a U.S. attorney’s office spokesperson.

Clark is a key player in Trump’s effort to leverage the Justice Department to help him stay in office. Investigators believe Clark may have used his former position as an assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources to persuade election officials in battleground states to change their states’ results in favor of Trump. According to The New York Times, in Dec. 2020 Clark helped draft a letter to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp baselessly claiming that the Justice Department had identified “significant concerns” about election results in Georgia, and advised Kemp to create “a separate slate” of electoral college electors “supporting Donald J. Trump.”

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Trump allegedly considered naming Clark attorney general after Attorney General William Barr — and after Barr resigned, acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen — refused to go along with the Big Lie. Trump dropped the plan to elevate Clark after Rosen, acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and Steve Engel, the former assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel, all threatened to resign.

Russ Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America, where Clark is a fellow, tweeted that Clark’s home was searched in a pre-dawn raid on Wednesday, and that the former DOJ official’s electronic devices were taken as he was “put … in the street in his pjs.”

News of the raid broke hours before Rosen, Donoghue, and Engel are set to testify at the Jan. 6 committee’s fifth hearing later on Thursday. The hearing is expected to cover Trump’s effort to corrupt the Justice Department into overturn the election. Clark was subpoenaed by the committee last year, but refused to comply. The committee voted to refer Clark for contempt charges. He eventually sat down with the committee, but reportedly invoked the Fifth Amendment repeatedly.

On Wednesday morning, federal agents served multiple subpoenas to individuals who agreed to participate in schemes by the Trump campaign to secure a slate of fake Electoral College electors in an effort to keep President Trump in power despite his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

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