The U.S. Justice Department has stepped into a politically charged ethics clash in Washington, siding with former senior official Jeffrey Clark — a Trump ally accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election results.
In a filing before the D.C. Court of Appeals, the Department urged judges to dismiss efforts to revoke Clark’s law license, warning that the disbarment proceedings represent “ethics-complaints-as-lawfare.” The brief, signed by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, cautioned that punishing government attorneys for carrying out their duties could “chill” prosecutorial decision-making across the federal system.
“This case exemplifies a troubling new pattern,” the Department’s brief argued, claiming that political adversaries were attempting to weaponize bar rules to punish officials for decisions made in service to a sitting administration.
The court is currently weighing a July recommendation from the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, which called for Clark’s disbarment after concluding that he was “prepared to cause the Justice Department to tell a lie” about its investigation into election fraud claims. Clark, a senior DOJ figure during Trump’s tenure, had drafted a letter urging Georgia lawmakers to reconsider the 2020 election results despite no evidence of widespread fraud.
That letter — which claimed the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the Georgia vote — was never sent after senior DOJ leadership threatened to resign en masse if Trump followed through with plans to appoint Clark acting attorney general.
The Justice Department’s intervention in the case drew notable support from three former Republican attorneys general — Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr, and Michael Mukasey — who submitted their own brief, accusing disciplinary authorities of overstepping into executive branch deliberations.
Clark’s attorney described the case as proof that the D.C. Bar has “gone completely off the rails,” while disciplinary officials have declined public comment.
Clark, who now leads a regulatory review division in the White House Office of Management and Budget, remains at the center of a wider reckoning over lawyers who aided Trump’s post-election efforts. Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro have already been disbarred, and John Eastman’s fate still hangs before the California bar.
At stake is more than one man’s license — it’s a test of how far professional ethics can reach into the political machinery of the Justice Department itself.
