The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit towards Washington, DC’s attorney disciplinary authorities following their recommendation to disbar Jeffrey Clark, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, over his efforts to “cast doubt” on the 2020 election leads to assist of the president.
The lawsuit towards DC’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility, Court of Appeals, associated authorities and the town itself argues that Clark — who in 2020 was an assistant attorney normal — shouldn’t be disciplined over “internal Executive Branch deliberations.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit comes because the Trump administration has taken a renewed curiosity within the 2020 election, narrowing in on Georgia — the place Trump has claimed the election was rigged. For instance, the Justice Department has subpoenaed Fulton County — house of Atlanta — for 2020 election staff’ private info.
In its July 2025 suggestion to disbar Clark, the DC Board on Professional Responsibility wrote that after the 2020 election, he “urged Justice Department leadership to issue a letter he had drafted that cast doubt on the election results” regardless of being advised by division management his principle was not appropriate.
The letter Clark wrote, however by no means despatched, urged the Georgia state legislature to research election “irregularities” and, if essential, appoint electors themselves that go towards the outcomes of the favored vote. The letter was meant to be a “proof of concept” that will ultimately be despatched to a number of states.
A majority of the board — which examines attorney self-discipline circumstances however doesn’t have the ultimate say the native courts have on regulation licenses within the district — advisable disbarment. Clark remains to be an attorney in good standing within the DC bar, in keeping with bar information.
The Justice Department argued in its Wednesday lawsuit, “Defendants are punishing Mr. Clark because he tried to persuade his superiors within the Department of Justice that they should issue a draft letter that he felt reflected the actual law and facts about the 2020 election.”
“But D.C. disciplinary authorities may not punish a United States official for disagreeing with a superior or coworker or for sharing an opinion just because those disciplinary authorities disagree with it,” the lawsuit provides.
It goes on to say that such disciplinary actions will set a chilling precedent.
“Weaponizing state bar discipline against Executive Branch attorneys in this way chills them from giving candid legal advice to others in the Executive Branch, including the President and Attorney General,” the lawsuit says.
Clark mentioned in a social media post on X that the lawsuit “is an important step to vindicate the separation of powers.” NCS has reached out to Clark for additional remark.
In its July 2025 suggestion, the DC Board on Professional Responsibility argued that legal professionals ought to have “the highest standard of professional conduct. At a minimum, they must be honest.”
Clark “should be disbarred as a consequence,” the board wrote, including that it could ship a message that his conduct wouldn’t be tolerated.
The board’s suggestion was then despatched to the DC Court of Appeals for a remaining resolution.
At the time of the board’s suggestion, Clark served because the performing administrator of the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
He is now a vp at Oversight Project, a conservative watchdog group. Clark not too long ago appeared as a lawyer in federal courtroom in an ongoing public information circumstances searching for the discharge of audio recordings of former President Joe Biden chatting with a ghost author.
The lawsuit additionally comes because the Justice Department has elevated its pushback on the self-policing traditions of the authorized trade in Trump’s second time period. The administration final yr attempted to undermine some legal professionals’ potential to signify purchasers at main regulation companies that Trump disliked, and this yr, the division tried to vary a rule to assist it step in to dam ethics critiques by state bars of a few of its attorneys.
Both strikes by the Justice Department have been extensively criticized by the authorized trade as efforts to take away the requirements that legal professionals adhere to when training.
“The D.C. Bar will no longer be permitted to probe sensitive Executive Branch deliberations and target Executive Branch officials with whom they happen to politically disagree, and Federal attorneys will once again be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues,” Stanley Woodward, the No. 3 lawyer on the Justice Department who filed the lawsuit, mentioned in a assertion.
The workplace of Hamilton Fox, who’s amongst these being sued as DC Disciplinary Counsel, which introduced the ethics costs towards Clark years in the past, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Meanwhile, the FBI has opened a prison investigation into what the Justice Department has described as irregularities in how Georgia’s Fulton County carried out the 2020 election. As a part of the investigation, the company searched the Fulton County elections workplace in January and seized election supplies.
Several legal professionals have confronted disciplinary proceedings for efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, together with John Eastman, who was disbarred in California earlier this yr.