WASHINGTON—The defense team for former Department of Justice official Jeff Clark rested on April 3 in his D.C. bar disciplinary trial, but not before asking the adjudication panel to allow the hearing to go into recess so they could proceed immediately to an expedited appeal process.
Disciplinary Chair Merrill Hirsh rejected the request. Both he and D.C. Bar Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton Fox III said they were unaware of a legal procedural vehicle for such an interruption, which would involve Mr. Clark temporarily waiving his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Mr. Clark faces disbarment or sanctions from D.C. bar authorities. At the end of the proceedings on Wednesday, Mr. Hirsh read aloud a key paragraph from the allegations against Mr. Clark: “These charges arise from [Mr. Clark’s] conduct after he proposed sending the letter and was informed by his superiors that there was no factual basis for the claims made in it.”
The letter in question was a draft that Mr. Clark wrote and addressed to election officials in Georgia following the 2020 presidential election. The letter stated that the Justice Department (DOJ) was investigating allegations of election fraud in Georgia, where President Joe Biden won by just over 12,000 votes.
On the first day of the hearing, then-deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue said the DOJ examined some of the allegations of fraud and irregularities but found that they were either false or so minor that they would not have changed the outcome of the election.
Mr. Clark’s defense consisted of bringing witnesses to contest this claim.
One defense witness DOJ deputy White House Liaison Heidi Hilting Stirrup testified that when she raised concerns about reports of election irregularities with then-DOJ Chief of Staff Will Levi, he became “agitated” and “exasperated” and finally offered to arrange a conversation with then-Attorney General William Barr.
She said Mr. Barr told her there was no federal role in investigating voter fraud. But on the same day, the DOJ sent out a memo to U.S. State Attorneys asking them to investigate allegations of election irregularities. Rebecca Smith, one of three members of the disciplinary panel presiding over the hearing, seemed puzzled by this apparent contradiction. “Barr had said there wasn’t a federal role in doing that, but on that same date, they sent out a memo that, as I read it, would say ’there’s a federal role,'” she said.
Mark Wingate, a member of the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections, said that he twice refused to certify the election results. He said it was a “major concern” for him that there were “more voters on the active voter rolls than the population of Fulton County.”
Mr. Wingate said that his attempts to clarify the anomalies surrounding the election were repeatedly frustrated: Chain of custody documents for ballots were requested but never produced. “There was nothing done to answer my questions,” he said. When he inquired about signature verification for mail-in ballots, he said he was told, “We didn’t do any.”
Mr. Wingate said the board asked to see some of the 24-hour surveillance tapes of ballot boxes, but “there was never … even an inch of footage that was ever delivered to the board.” Mr. Wingate also said he was never interviewed by the FBI, the DOJ, or the U.S. Attorney’s office in Georgia.
On Wednesday, Mr. Hirsh spoke to both sides about the procedure for the rest of the hearing. After both teams give their closing arguments, the trial will enter an inquiry phase where the three-member disciplinary panel will examine their arguments.
“You can expect a hot bench,” Mr. Hirsh said. “We have a lot of questions about this case.”
