The thing everyone overlooked during yesterday’s Jeffrey Clark disbarment hearing

| 3:00 pm EDT March 28, 2024
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I’ve said before that the disbarment hearings against Donald Trump’s election lawyers are nothing compared to the criminal trials that Trump’s election lawyers are facing. Put another way: would you rather get disbarred or go to prison? It’s why I haven’t written much about these disbarment efforts. They’re important in their own way, but they’re not the main course.

For instance we saw Trump attorney John Eastman get recommended for disbarment yesterday, a development that everyone saw coming. That hearing got a lot of attention. But it was a different disbarment hearing in a different jurisdiction that was more interesting.

During Trump lawyer Jeffrey Clark’s separate disbarment hearing on Wednesday, he kept invoking the Fifth Amendment. He had the opportunity to defend himself, or to provide some kind of plausible deniability for his actions. But instead he kept quiet.

That’s because Clark (alongside Eastman) is set to go on criminal trial in Fulton County this summer, and he’s also potentially in line to get criminally indicted by Jack Smith. Clark was clearly worried that if he said anything at all during the disbarment hearing about his 2020 election-related actions, it could come back to bite him during his criminal trial(s).

In other words, Jeffrey Clark is indeed far more worried about going to prison than about getting disbarred. And in spite of all the hoopla about how Trump and his cronies like Clark are supposedly going to get away with it all, Clark expects to be on criminal trial soon. Clark fears he’s on track for prison, and he’s worried about making it even easier for prosecutors to get him convicted. It’s a reminder that the people in Trump world don’t think they’re getting away with it all.