This is so crazy it reads like dialogue from a movie. (Which it no doubt will be some day.)
This is the scene:
Trump crony Jeffrey Clark, a high-ranking attorney in the Justice Dept., has been secretly meeting with Trump after the 2020 election in a bid to get himself installed as acting Attorney General, a position Clark was (and is) comically unqualified to hold.
Clark has been previously ordered not to meet with Trump without clearing it with Clark’s superiors. Clark had been secretly whispering in Trump’s ear about stolen elections, and how he (Clark) would act when others in the DOJ were (in Clark’s re-telling) too timid in supporting Trump’s bid to overturn the election.
Finally, the Acting Deputy in the DOJ Richard Donoghue and another high-ranking dept. lawyer went to the Oval Office where Trump was waiting with Clark.
Trump was poised to do as Clark wished, and appoint Clark as acting attorney general.
Trump asked Donoghue what he would do if that happened.
“Sir, I would resign immediately,” Donoghue said he responded. “There’s no way I’m serving under this guy [Clark].”
Trump then turned to Steve Engel, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, whom Trump reportedly had considered for a seat on the Supreme Court.
“Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?” Trump asked.
“Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You’d leave me no choice,” Engel responded, according to Donoghue’s account. Engel declined to comment.
“And we’re not the only ones,” Donoghue said he told Trump. “You should understand that your entire department leadership will resign. Every [assistant attorney general] will resign. … Mr. President, these aren’t bureaucratic leftovers from another administration. You picked them. This is your leadership team. You sent every one of them to the Senate; you got them confirmed. What is that going to say about you, when we all walk out at the same time?”
Donoghue then told Trump that Clark had no qualification to be attorney general: “He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. He’s never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury.”
Clark objected.
“Well, I’ve done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that,” Clark said, according to Donoghue’s deposition.
“That’s right,” Donoghue said he responded. “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”
Trump relented and Clark missed his chance to possibly change the course of American history by doing Trump’s bidding.
This stuff get more unbelievable the more we find out. Except at this point, nothing is unbelievable. That is one of the things that has changed about this country forever. Nothing seems too nutty to contemplate.
