Jeffrey Clark (Fulton County Jail), Edwin Meese (AP Photograph/Alex Brandon)
The 91-year-old former lawyer basic of america throughout the Ronald Reagan administration chimed in Saturday on the Georgia racketeering (RICO) prosecution of former DOJ assistant lawyer basic Jeffrey Clark, calling the case a “main affront to federal supremacy.”
Edwin Meese III, in a declaration filed earlier than U.S. District Choose Steve Jones, the Barack Obama appointed jurist who has been dealing with challenges of the RICO prosecution underneath the federal removing statute, wrote that he was not impressed with Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ (D) case.
“I’ve learn the Indictment in State of Georgia v. Donald J Trump, et al., and centered on the allegations therein that reference Jeffrey B. Clark, who is among the co-defendants within the case. The Indictment alleges that Mr. Clark drafted a letter and, on December 28, 2020, despatched it to his superiors on the Division of Justice (the Performing Lawyer Common Jeff Rosen and the Principal Affiliate Deputy Lawyer Common Richard Donoghue), looking for their approval and co signature, and once more sought their approval and co-signature on January 2, 2021,” Meese started. “The letter is alleged within the Indictment to be a legal tried false writing the alleged falsity of which lies within the distinction between 1) the place the draft letter proposed that the Division of Justice take and a couple of) the place concerning the election in Georgia that was adhered to by the then-Performing Lawyer Common Jeffrey Rosen and Principal Affiliate Deputy Lawyer Common Richard Donoghue.”
Meese expressed his perception that Clark was performing squarely inside the scope of his federal workplace when he joined in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, regardless of the opposing views of DOJ as a complete with reference to election fraud, as seen within the testimony of then-Performing Lawyer Common Jeffrey Rosen and Principal Affiliate Deputy Lawyer Common Richard Donoghue.
Clark was on monitor to turn out to be performing lawyer basic of america earlier than Jan. 6, however Trump pumped the brakes on that as a mutiny of high management contained in the DOJ appeared assured. Although a DOJ environmental lawyer by commerce, Clark had waded in decidedly completely different waters when he put collectively a never-sent draft letter urging states Trump misplaced to “ship unauthorized slate of electors to Congress.”
That letter, Rosen and Donoghue testified, falsely claimed that DOJ as an establishment had “recognized vital issues which will have impacted the end result of the election in a number of States, together with the State of Georgia.”
The draft letter advisable that the Georgia Common Meeting “convene in particular session in order that its legislators are ready to take extra testimony, obtain new proof, and deliberate on the matter in line with its duties underneath the usConstitution” and held Jan. 6 out because the day of authorized reckoning.
Edwin Meese responded to the above by opining that Rosen/Donoghue and Clark merely had a disagreement. Calling the Clark draft letter “fairly modest in suggesting solely that additional investigation was warranted,” Meese asserted that DA Willis has opened a authorized Pandora’s field that not even segregationists dared take into account throughout the Kennedy years:
I’m not conscious of any state legal prosecution ever being introduced in opposition to a President and a senior Justice Division official like Mr. Clark for his or her privileged and confidential discussions of whether or not and the way to assert federal regulation enforcement authority apart from this new State of Georgia v. Trump, et al. Indictment. The prosecution of the President and an AAG is a significant affront to federal supremacy by no means earlier than seen within the historical past of our nation. If the premise of this prosecution had been to be accepted, then state regulation enforcement officers may arrest native U.S. Attorneys and their Assistants whereas they had been deliberating over whether or not and/or the way to method a doable prosecution of state or native officers. Equally, underneath Fulton County’s interpretation of federal supremacy, state or native officers may enter the Oval Workplace and arrest the President and his Lawyer Common throughout their deliberations over whether or not and to what extent to say federal regulation enforcement powers in opposition to state or native officers. Not even George Wallace or Orval Faubus, throughout the heights of the heated civil rights-era disputes, had been keen to go that far in opposition to President Kennedy and his Lawyer Common Robert F. Kennedy.
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