Justice Department sues DC’s attorney disciplinary authorities for recommending a Trump ally be disbarred
Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference
(CNN) — The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Washington, DC’s attorney disciplinary authorities following their recommendation to disbar Jeffrey Clark, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, over his efforts to “cast doubt” on the 2020 election results in support of the president.
The lawsuit against DC’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility, Court of Appeals, related authorities and the city itself argues that Clark — who in 2020 was an assistant attorney general — should not be disciplined over “internal Executive Branch deliberations.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit comes as the Trump administration has taken a renewed interest in the 2020 election, narrowing in on Georgia — where Trump has claimed the election was rigged. For example, the Justice Department has subpoenaed Fulton County — home of Atlanta — for 2020 election workers’ personal information.
In its July 2025 recommendation to disbar Clark, the DC Board on Professional Responsibility wrote that after the 2020 election, he “urged Justice Department leadership to issue a letter he had drafted that cast doubt on the election results” despite being told by department leadership his theory was not correct.
The letter Clark wrote, but never sent, urged the Georgia state legislature to investigate election “irregularities” and, if necessary, appoint electors themselves that go against the results of the popular vote. The letter was meant to be a “proof of concept” that would eventually be sent to several states.
A majority of the board — which examines attorney discipline cases but does not have the final say the local courts have on law licenses in the district — recommended disbarment. Clark is still an attorney in good standing in the DC bar, according to bar records.
The Justice Department argued in its Wednesday lawsuit, “Defendants are punishing Mr. Clark because he tried to persuade his superiors within the Department of Justice that they should issue a draft letter that he felt reflected the actual law and facts about the 2020 election.”
“But D.C. disciplinary authorities may not punish a United States official for disagreeing with a superior or coworker or for sharing an opinion just because those disciplinary authorities disagree with it,” the lawsuit adds.
It goes on to claim that such disciplinary actions will set a chilling precedent.
“Weaponizing state bar discipline against Executive Branch attorneys in this way chills them from giving candid legal advice to others in the Executive Branch, including the President and Attorney General,” the lawsuit says.
Clark said in a social media post on X that the lawsuit “is an important step to vindicate the separation of powers.” CNN has reached out to Clark for further comment.
In its July 2025 recommendation, the DC Board on Professional Responsibility argued that lawyers should have “the highest standard of professional conduct. At a minimum, they must be honest.”
Clark “should be disbarred as a consequence,” the board wrote, adding that it would send a message that his behavior would not be tolerated.
The board’s recommendation was then sent to the DC Court of Appeals for a final decision.
At the time of the board’s recommendation, Clark served as the acting administrator of the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
He is now a vice president at Oversight Project, a conservative watchdog group. Clark recently appeared as a lawyer in federal court in an ongoing public records cases seeking the release of audio recordings of former President Joe Biden speaking to a ghost writer.
The lawsuit also comes as the Justice Department has increased its pushback on the self-policing traditions of the legal industry in Trump’s second term. The administration last year attempted to undermine some lawyers’ ability to represent clients at major law firms that Trump disliked, and this year, the department attempted to change a rule to help it step in to block ethics reviews by state bars of some of its attorneys.
Both moves by the Justice Department have been widely criticized by the legal industry as efforts to remove the standards that lawyers adhere to when practicing.
“The D.C. Bar will no longer be permitted to probe sensitive Executive Branch deliberations and target Executive Branch officials with whom they happen to politically disagree, and Federal attorneys will once again be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues,” Stanley Woodward, the No. 3 lawyer at the Justice Department who filed the lawsuit, said in a statement.
The office of Hamilton Fox, who is among those being sued as DC Disciplinary Counsel, which brought the ethics charges against Clark years ago, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into what the Justice Department has described as irregularities in how Georgia’s Fulton County carried out the 2020 election. As part of the investigation, the agency searched the Fulton County elections office in January and seized election materials.
Several lawyers have faced disciplinary proceedings for efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, including John Eastman, who was disbarred in California earlier this year.
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CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.
