A judge determined on Friday that former Trump administration Justice Department staffer Jeffrey Clark cannot have his election subversion case in Georgia transferred to federal court.
US District Judge Steve Jones’s ruling is the latest setback for the Georgia defendants who sought to transfer their cases from state to federal court in the hopes of better trial conditions or the possible dismissal of all criminal charges on the basis of immunity protections for US government officials.
Jones had previously turned down a similar request from Mark Meadows, former chief of staff to President Trump in 2020 who is also named in the Georgia indictment.
On Thursday, Trump made a shocking statement that he would not be making the same request.
Clark, Trump, and Meadows are all named as defendants in the Georgia lawsuit, and they have all entered not guilty pleas.
According to two congressional reports, previous AWN reporting, and the state and federal election subversion indictments, after Trump lost the 2020 election, he contacted Clark, who wanted to send letters to top officials in states Trump lost, falsely claiming the Justice Department uncovered major voting irregularities and pressing them to consider intervening with the results.
Because Clark was in charge of the Civil Division (which does not conduct election investigations) at the time, his superiors repeatedly shot down his ideas and told him the fraud allegations were without merit. While Trump almost made him attorney general so he could deliver the letters, he ultimately decided against it after hearing that some high-ranking Justice Department officials were planning to resign in protest.
At the court hearing before Jones, Clark’s attorneys maintained that their client never acted outside the scope of his federal duties, saying that Trump had personally requested his involvement in election-related topics.
Jones made this claim about Clark’s evidence on Friday.
Jones opined, “The Court has no reason to doubt that the President has authority to reconfigure [the assistant attorney general’s] duties,” but “the evidence does not support that the President did reconfigure Clark’s duties to include election investigation or oversight,” or reassign Clark to the Civil Rights or Criminal Divisions, which do interact with state elections.
