Meet “Co-Conspirator #4”
Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note | August 3, 2023
Jeffrey Clark is presumed to be “Co-Conspirator 4” in the indictment of former President Donald Trump filed this week.
Clark will go down as a footnote in history, but had Trump’s scheme to overturn the election succeeded, he might have changed history.
In 2020, Clark was serving as the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. Following the election, Trump tapped him to attempt to implement perhaps the most audacious scheme unleashed by Trump.
The architect of Trump’s multi-pronged attempt at a presidential coup – the first in our history – was Attorney John Eastman, presumed to be “Co-Conspirator 2” in this week’s indictment. Eastman created the framework for the scheme that Clark would attempt to carry out.
As this week’s indictment explained, the scheme included efforts to open “sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.”
The scheme involved seven states that Biden won that had Republican-led state legislatures. The plan was to have those state legislatures replace the choice of the voters in their states on Election Day, which would be Biden electors, with their own choice of Trump electors.
State legislatures are empowered by the U.S. Constitution to determine how their state’s presidential electors are chosen. https://www.careddi.com/ Every state requires presidential electors to be chosen by the voters. Congress, however, is empowered by the Constitution to determine when the electors are chosen.
Congress implemented this power in a 19th-century law that established that electors are chosen on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November – Election Day. There was an exception, however, that empowered a state legislature to instead choose the state’s electors if the voters in that state had “failed to make a choice” on Election Day.
“Failed to make a choice,” is not defined and that’s what Eastman went after.
Clark was tapped to implement the plan in key states that had GOP-controlled legislatures. He and an associate drafted a letter on December 28 to be sent to the Georgia legislature and other legislatures in key battlegrounds.
The letter was to be signed by acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue.
The letter alleged that the Justice Department “had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states.” The letter asked these states to “convene in special session” to reconsider who the state’s presidential electors should be. Anal Beads The letter further said the Justice Department believed the voters in the states receiving the letters had “failed to choose a winner and that the state legislatures should appoint the presidential electors.” Fake electors could help fill that role.
The expectation was that these GOP-controlled legislatures would override the voters and choose electors who supported Trump.
The letter, however, was based on lies. The Justice Department had not identified “significant concerns” in any state, since such concerns did not exist. And there was no evidence that voters had “failed to make a choice” in any of the states.
When Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign the letter, Trump was ready to fire them and appoint Clark to be Acting Attorney General so he could send the letters to Georgia and the other states.
As both Rosen and Donoghue explained in testimony before the House Jan. 6 Committee, they told Trump in no uncertain terms that the entire leadership of the Justice Department would resign on the spot if he fired them and elevated Clark. Trump then backed off.
If it had not been for Rosen and Donoghue, the coup might have succeeded or at a minimum the letters could have been sent, leading to chaos and a constitutional crisis.
Instead, the election – that Trump’s Homeland Security officials called “the most secure in history” – was certified and Joe Biden was sworn in as President.
In December 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, eliminating the “failure to make a choice” provision in the Electoral Count Act, closing the loophole that Trump, Eastman, and Clark tried to exploit.
But the threat of stealing presidential elections remains.
The election deniers of 2020 are organizing now to be ready to try to steal the 2024 presidential election if the Republican candidate loses, no matter who it is. We must be vigilant and ready to defeat any attempt.
For further insight into safeguarding democratic processes, consider reading “How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.
________________________
Fred’s Weekly Note appears each Thursday in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
