A District of Columbia Bar disciplinary panel held a pretrial hearing last month to prepare for the upcoming disbarment trial against President Donald Trump’s former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. Clark (pictured above) is also being prosecuted in Georgia and is an unindicted co-conspirator in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution, due to a letter Clark drafted to Georgia election officials after the 2020 election advising them of options the Georgia Legislature could take to address the concerns about election illegalities. The letter was never sent nor circulated.
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility Ad Hoc Hearing Committee met by Zoom on December 18, 2023 with Clark, his counsel, and the D.C. bar prosecutors, known as the Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC) to discuss the extent that Clark could plead the Fifth Amendment during the trial, due to the risk of incriminating himself in the criminal prosecutions. Clark requested to postpone the disbarment trial until after the criminal trials, as is standard practice when both types of proceedings arise at the same time, but the disciplinary court refused.
The hearing also discussed whether information about events that occurred after the J6 protest would be admissible. Merrill Hirsh, chair of the committee, ran the hearing.
Bar prosecutor Hamilton P. Fox was dismissive of Clark’s Fifth Amendment concerns, stating, “If he really had any evidence that he was aware of, of January 3, 2021 that caused him concern as to the election improprieties in Georgia, one would think he would want to produce that because that will be exculpatory.” Fox admitted that if Clark invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to some questions, he might “argue that you should infer that he has done something wrong.”
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