Trump’s Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark, Target of Election Lawfare, to be Appointed Regulation Czar

President Donald Trump has tapped his former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark as regulation czar in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Clark was targeted by the Democrats’ lawfare for assisting Trump with handling the botched 2020 election, and unlike several other officials at the DOJ, did not turn on Trump during the tense time leading up to January 6, 2021. Clark will not need Senate confirmation for the position.

Rob Gasaway, a business consultant, academic, and legal reformer who mentored Clark in private practice and who has known him for 30 years, commended the forthcoming appointment. “In today’s confused, often diseased, legal profession, Jeff Clark’s rehabilitation and return to high public office stands as a beacon to hope for better times,” he told The Tennessee Star. “Today, one can dream more reasonably than yesterday that within our lifetimes the great problem of restoring constitutional morality will be tackled inside the legal profession, in the halls of legal academia, in the larger public mind — and perhaps even be solved.”

Alex Haberbush, a constitutional attorney based in Long Beach, California, who served as legal counsel to Trump’s former attorney John Eastman — Eastman is also undergoing lawfare due to his role representing Trump regarding the 2020 election illegalities — told The Star he was thrilled with the appointment. “Jeff Clark has consistently demonstrated unwavering principle and integrity, proving himself steadfast in his commitment to Constitutional principles even in the face of immense institutional pressure,” he said. “He is precisely the sort of man ideally suited to confront our nation’s regulatory behemoth and bring it to heel. President Trump could not have chosen better.”

The OIRA is a division within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the Executive Office of the President. It reviews draft regulations from government agencies and oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in areas primarily related to tech. Trump has vowed to eliminate 10 existing regulations for each new one created.

Clark has extensive experience in the area of administrative regulations. He worked as an appellate litigator and administrative law expert for the prominent Washington D.C. law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He served as an elected member of the Governing Council of the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law Section from 2012 to 2015. He has experience in matters involving the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

During Trump’s first term, Clark served as assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division and was named acting head of the Civil Division in 2020. After the botched 2020 election, Trump asked for assistance from the DOJ looking into the wrongdoing. Several of his top appointees balked.

On December 1, 2020, Attorney General Bill Barr said there was no widespread election fraud, but he never investigated it and refused to give permission to several U.S. Attorneys around the country who asked for authorization to look into it in their states. Barr resigned on December 23, 2020, after some hostile posts on X (then Twitter) directed at him by Trump regarding that and the Hunter Biden laptop. One of those officials who was turned down, William McSwain, who was serving as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sent Trump a letter a few months later revealing that Barr “instructed me not to make any public statements or put out any press releases regarding possible election irregularities.”

Clark’s only involvement in the 2020 election disputes was drafting a letter that was never sent in December 2020 to Georgia officials stating there was “evidence of significant irregularities” in the election. In it, he suggested that the state legislature could take action to address the problems. He urged acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue to sign the letter, but they refused. At one point, Trump became so frustrated with Rosen that he designated Clark the acting attorney general for a brief period.

Clark has been working at the Center for Renewing America with Russ Vought. Trump tapped Vought, who served in the president’s first term as deputy director of the OMB, to lead the agency his second term, so he will be back working with Clark again.

The Star News Network extensively covered the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary proceedings against Clark. However, state bars that aggressively went after attorneys over their involvement in disputed elections have begun backing off from that approach. In Arizona last year, after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that election attorneys should not be disciplined, the State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary judge dismissed charges against two of Kari Lake’s attorneys who filed a lawsuit challenging the use of voting machine tabulators, citing that ruling.

While the D.C. Bar’s attorney Hamilton Fox is pursuing full disbarment of Clark, so far a three-member committee of the District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility has only recommended a two-year suspension. Clark was also targeted in the Fulton County RICO prosecution initiated by Fulton County DA Leticia James, which appears to be falling apart as she’s been removed from the case for a conflict of interest after it emerged that she appointed a man she was sleeping with as the chief prosecutor.

– – –

Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Jeff Clark” by Jeff Clark.