Attorney-client privilege
Trumpian hack refuses to answer.
Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark stonewalled the House Select Committee investigating January 6, responding to a subpoena demanding he appear for an interview with the panel, but not answering questions posed to him, sources familiar with his appearance told CNN.
He should be locked up then.
Instead, Clark provided a letter from his attorney Harry MacDougald that claimed he could not provide testimony until a court declares that his interactions with former President Donald Trump are not protected under attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.
Attorney-client privilege!!!
He worked for the country, not Trump. He was a DoJ official, not Trump’s lawyer. He never worked for Trump. Trump was never his client.
Clark was one of the officials within the Justice Department pushing to pursue unfounded claims of voter fraud in the weeks after the November election, and, according to officials who interacted with him, was in touch with Trump repeatedly.
In an effort to steal the election. That doesn’t make him Trump’s lawyer.
As a sympathizer to election fraud conspiracy theories, Clark became Trump’s most useful asset inside the Justice Department in the days before January 6. Clark helped Trump devise a plan to oust the then acting attorney general, place himself atop the department, and have the DOJ intervene in Georgia to set aside its voting results in order to sway the state toward Trump.
Gotta say, I hope he gets prosecuted for all that.
When Clark’s superiors learned of his scheming with Trump in early January, they threatened to resign en masse.
It takes a lot of chutzpah to now claim that his illegal and illicit plotting with Trump confers attorney-client privilege on the plotting.
Is Congress going to use its legal muscle against him or Bannon? What am I missing here? It seems that the Congress is weak and ineffectual against the executive branch, even an adminstration that is no longer in power.
It’s certainly particularly weak and ineffectual when it has only just barely a majority, and not always even that because of Manchin.
I get that, but it seems to be that in the House, if they have the power to issue subpoenas, they should have the power to enforce them. Or do they need to have a sympathetic judge do that? There’s a flaw in the checks and balances if the Congress can’t enforce its checks.
#3: technically, enforcement is the job of the executive branch. The judicial branch passes judgement but if the executive refused to enforce it, in theory, it wouldn’t be enforceable. That usually doesn’t happen. Judges send people to jail, the people go to jail. Congress passes a law, it is treated like a law. But that only works when the parties agree to keep the system moving in the usual way. Which has been the tradition for most cases except those involving the rich, who are much more likely to be pardoned or otherwise given considerations.