Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice lawyer who was a key player in Donald Trump’s attempt to reverse his 2020 loss, compared the FBI to the infamous East German Stasi secret police after his home was searched by law enforcement.
“I don’t recognize this country anymore with these kinds of Stasi-like things happening,” Mr Clark told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Thursday, a day after agents raided Mr Clark’s Virginia home and seized electronic devices.
The host agreed with him.
“This is Stalinist,” Carlson said. “At some point somebody’s going to fight back and it’s going to get super ugly. I pray that doesn’t happen but I think it probably will.”
As Thursday’s January 6 hearings laid bare, Mr Clark was at the center of an unprecedented pressure campaign from Donald Trump and his allies to use the DOJ to change the election results
Mr Clark urged his superiors to sign onto a letter that would see the department back up Donald Trump’s unfounded claims about the election and imply state legislatures should send their own pro-Trump slate of electors to the final Electoral College vote count, even in places where Job Biden won.
By January of 2021, Mr Trump was considering cleaning house at the top of the DOJ, and elevating Mr Clark to be acting attorney general.
According to testimony on Thursday, it took top Justice Department leaders threatening to resign en masse and warning of a potential constitutional crisis to stop the president from going through with the plan, likening it to a “murder-suicide” pact.
Mr Clark argued the FBI searched him just before Thursday’s hearing to make a public spectacle.
“With the hearing that was pointed at me and targeting me today with the special audience member of Sean Penn, so you know this is Hollywood, the very next day, it looks highly coincidental, and Tucker, I don’t believe in coincidences,” Mr Clark added.
The January 6 committee has already interviewed Mr Clark, but he largely declined to answer their questions, citing the 5th Amendment rights to remain silent and avoid self-incrimination.
