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Tag: jeffrey clark
"Before The Next Teardrop Falls": Jenna Ellis Makes Courtroom Confession

"Before The Next Teardrop Falls": Jenna Ellis Makes Courtroom Confession

Jenna Ellis, the lawyer who in 2020 described herself as part of Donald Trump’s “elite strike force team,” has reached a plea deal with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia and will plead guilty to a felony she committed when she worked to help Trump overturn the election results in Georgia. She was charged with soliciting a public officer to violate his oath to the people of Georgia. She pleaded guilty to a single felony count of aiding and abetting false writings and statements.

Ellis is the third Trump lawyer to plead guilty to committing crimes in the racketeering case against Trump and 18 other co-defendants. The other lawyers are Sidney Powell, who pleaded guilty last Thursday, and Kenneth Chesebro, who entered a plea of guilty the following day, on the morning his trial was set to begin. Another co-defendant, Scott Hall, pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiracy to interfere in the performance of official election duties in the Coffee County theft of election data.

In her guilty plea, Ellis agreed to complete three to five years of probation, to pay a $5,000 fine, to do100 hours of community service, and to write a letter of apology to the people of the state of Georgia. Ellis tearfully read her letter of apology aloud to the judge this morning, beginning by introducing herself “as an attorney who is also a Christian, I take my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously, and I endeavor to be a person of sound moral and ethical character in all of my dealings.”

Except when it came to helping her hero Donald Trump steal the election of 2020 , apparently.

Previously, like Powell and Chesebro before her, Ellis recorded on video a lengthy “proffer,” giving prosecutors details of the facts she will be able to testify to when she is called to give evidence against her co-defendants, including Trump.

Prosecutors read aloud the indictment against Ellis, including portions that detailed how she wrote memos for Trump about how Vice President Pence could go about overturning the election results on January 6, 2021, when he presided over the certification of electoral ballots in the Congress. The indictment also outlined how she had traveled with fellow Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia, where she gave false information about the election to state lawmakers, urging them to use their powers to overturn the election results in their states in favor of Trump. Ellis has already been sanctioned by a Colorado judge for the false statements she made about the election, and in court today, she admitted to making more false statements on behalf of Trump.

She claimed she made the statements “in a reckless state of mind,” and in her apology stated that she had “relied on lawyers with many more years of experience than I to provide me with true and reliable information.” She went on to say that she had failed to do “due diligence” and check her facts. In other words, as a “Christian” lawyer, Jenna Ellis blamed her failures on other lawyers, said she had been “misled” by them, and said she no longer believed the lies she told about Trump being the winner of the 2020 election. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges,” Ellis said in her apology letter.

One lawyer who would seem to have “misled” Ellis is Rudy Giuliani. Another would seem to be John Eastman, and yet another may be Jeffrey Clark. None of these men will probably be sleeping very comfortably tonight, thinking of the testimony she is set to give against them, not to mention Donald Trump, the client on whose behalf she, Powell, and Chesebro told all their lies.

Donald Trump’s friends, lawyers, campaign workers, and go-fers are discovering, one after another, that their loyalty to the former president ends at the jailhouse door.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Michael Flynn

Vengeful Trump Plans To Reappoint Disgraced Officials, Including Flynn

Former President Donald Trump is looking to re-appoint two of his previous top leaders if elected in 2024, Rolling Stone reports.

Two people familiar with the matter told the publication the former president has his eyes on both former Department of Justice lawyer and acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Clark and former Trump advisor Michael Flynn to hold high-level positions in his potential second administration.

However, both former Trump officials played major roles in the 2024 hopeful's attempt to overturn the 2020 election, leading to the deadly January 6 insurrection.

Walter Shaub, a senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight and former director of the Office of Government Ethics, said Flynn is "unfit for public service" and "no one should ever place him in a position of trust again," adding, "I'm surprised [Clark] is even still allowed to be a lawyer, much less a public servant."

Shaub noted, "Bringing these two back into government in high-level positions would be tantamount to a declaration of authoritarian principles by a presidential administration. To even consider it would be disgraceful and anti-American."

One of the people familiar with the matter told Rolling Stone, "[Trump] has said he believes they are both 'strong' candidates for senior positions. He's mentioned that, and some other names, a couple of times that I know of … We'll see if it happens. President Trump calls Gen. Flynn a 'hero' all the time. Why wouldn't he want a hero working for him?"

In his effort to overturn the 2020 election, according to Rolling Stone, Clark urged DOJ top officials "to send a letter to the Georgia Legislature claiming that the department had discovered 'significant fraud'" and pressured "it to create alternate slates of electors," but the ploy was curbed by the DOJ leaders.

Had the attempt succeeded, it "would've effectively endorsed bogus conspiracy theories about election fraud and given an air of official legitimacy to efforts to overturn the election."

Regarding Flynn's attempted interference with the election results, Rolling Stone reports:

The retired Army lieutenant general was an early and loud voice calling for Trump to 'declare limited martial law' and 'temporarily suspend the Constitution' and lobbied the then-president to do so in a tense Oval Office meeting alongside Sidney Powell. As Trump's legal options to overturn the election fizzled, Flynn supported the 'Stop the Steal' movement and spoke at a rally for the group alongside Alex Jones and Ali Alexander the night before the insurrection in early 2021.

The publication notes Trump's reason for seeking their leadership is part of his "professed inclination to make his theoretical second term something of a revenge tour to revive the people and policies that even some members of his own party deemed too extreme," including "his first term historic federal 'killing spree' with group executions, gallows, and firing squads, invading Mexico, and bringing back an expanded version of his 'Muslim ban.''"

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Judge Unseals Coup Evidence Implicating Scott Perry And Trump Attorneys

Judge Unseals Coup Evidence Implicating Scott Perry And Trump Attorneys

Federal investigators have examined email exchanges between three Trump-affiliated attorneys and far-right Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), a key figure in Republican efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, a newly released court order showed.

The revelation emerged after Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the district court in Washington, D.C., granted the Justice Department’s request to unseal two previous court rulings — a memorandum and order from June and a memorandum opinion from September — declaring that the requested communications weren’t protected by any claims of privilege.

The tranche included 37 email exchanges between Perry, coup-plotting Trump attorney John Eastman, and former Justice Department officials Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski; an autobiography draft; and other writing in which Perry and the others discussed subverting the 2020 election.

Sections of the unsealed rulings — first reported by Politico — were redacted but nevertheless offer a clearer view into the DOJ’s swiftly expanding investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack and efforts by Trump and his allies to damage democracy irreversibly by keeping a defeated president in power.

The order disclosed details of the DOJ’s investigative processes from May through September — including investigators’ acquisition of over 130,000 documents through June search warrants — which included seizing Perry’s phone and searching Clark’s home in June.

The records included email conversations between Perry and Eastman about a phone call and communications between Clark and others disseminating news stories, the unsealed rulings showed, according to NBC News.

Last June the House Select Committee, a bipartisan congressional panel that has investigated the January 6 insurrection, aired testimony by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that Perry had pushed for Clark to take over the DOJ to help illegally keep then-lame duck President Trump in power.

"He wanted Mr. Clark — Mr. Jeff Clark — to take over the Department of Justice," Hutchinson had told congressional investigators of Perry in footage aired at a televised hearing.

Howell’s June opinion highlighted several exchanges that the DOJ’s filter team, on the lookout for records protected by privilege, flagged, including an email Klukowski sent Perry on November 11, 2020, with an attachment titled "Electors Clause/The Legislature option," per Politico.

The document, whose author wasn’t identified, argued "in support of the proposition that 'The Constitution makes state legislatures the final authority on presidential elections,’” Howell noted in the opinion.

Klukowski, NBC News reported, sent Perry another email on Christmas eve with a document titled "State Legislatures Can Self-Convene to Appoint Presidential Electors." No author was named for this document either.

Howell agreed with the filter team in her ruling that the documents weren’t covered by privilege in Klukowski’s case because he "was still employed in the federal government and therefore Congressman Perry could not have been his client.”

In her September opinion, Howell ruled that about 331 documents obtained from Clark, including the outline of an autobiography that Clark had penned recounting Trump’s effort to install him as acting attorney general, weren’t protected by attorney-client privilege.

"The outline's conclusion does not contain thoughts or legal strategies related to the congressional committee investigations, but rather a promise to 'resist communism' and work on 'Covid litigation and against wokeism," Howell said.

Although all four men have loomed large in various government investigations into Trump’s failed 2020 coup, none have been charged.

Clark’s attorney issued a statement on Friday blasting Howell’s decision to unseal the order, decrying the release as “incumbent on those at the department who sought this unsealing to explain why doing so is anything other than a calculated move to increase pressure on those being scrutinized as part of the investigation and to prejudice a possible future jury pool.”

Coup Plotter Jeffrey Clark Praised Election Conspiracy Film

Coup Plotter Jeffrey Clark Praised Election Conspiracy Film

Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official President Donald Trump sought to install as attorney general in the waning days of his administration to bolster his plot to subvert the 2020 election, is a fan of 2000 Mules, right-wing fraudster Dinesh D’Souza’s widely debunked, conspiracy-minded documentary purporting to uncover massive fraud in that election.

Trump wanted Clark, who supported the election subversion plan, to replace acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, who did not, but backed down when senior DOJ leaders threatened to resign en masse, Rosen and other witnesses told the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection during a Thursday hearing. Their testimony came the day after federal law enforcement officers searched Clark’s house.

Clark’s social media postings indicate an extraordinary credulity with regard to election fraud allegations. The would-be attorney general has repeatedly praised D’Souza’s 2000 Mules film on his Twitter feed, which is unverified but which he identified during an interview with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.


Clark urged University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck to “see 2000 Mules this week or next if you’re so focused on 2020” in a May 2 tweet.

On May 7, he asked Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias, “Do you have an attempted rebuttal to #2000MulesMovie? Were you part of the massive multi-State operation #TrueTheVote uncovered?”

Clark also highlighted an interview right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk did about the film by tweeting a write-up from the conspiracy theory website Gateway Pundit.

Clark has also alleged that the only reason to provide vote-by-mail, which was widely available during the 2020 election, is “to provide cover for elections to be stolen.”

2000 Mules' premise that geolocation data proves that widespread ballot box stuffing in key swing states swung the 2020 election has been debunked by an array of news outlets. The film has received heavy promotion on One America News but is apparently not credible enough for Fox News, which D’Souza has complained ignored it.

D’Souza pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and lying to investigators and was sentenced to five years of probation in 2014. He was pardoned by Trump in 2018.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.