Edwin Meese III, Attorney General for President Ronald Reagan and one of America’s foremost constitutional lawyers and scholars has just put a torpedo in the engine room of
Fulton County, Georgia’s Far Left Democrat prosecutor Fani Willis’s case against former Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Jeffrey Clark and by extension former President Donald Trump.
In an affidavit filed September 16, the former Attorney General explained in great detail how the state RICO charges against Mr. Clark fail on a variety of established executive branch privileges and that the proper venue to hear them is federal court, not a local Georgia state court.
As Margot Cleveland explained in an article for the Federalist, “A little over a month ago, a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, returned a sprawling indictment against 19 defendants, including former President Donald Trump. That indictment charged the defendants with various supposed crimes related to “alleged postelection interference with the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.”’
While federal courts in nearly all circumstances lack “jurisdiction” or the power to hear a case involving the state’s prosecution of an alleged violation of the state’s criminal code, the “federal officer removal statute” provides an exception to that rule. That statute, which is codified at § 1442(a)(1), provides that a “criminal prosecution that is commenced in a State court” against an “officer” of the United States or any federal agency may “remove” the case to a federal court if the prosecution is “for or relating to any act under color of such office…,” noted attorney Cleveland.
The criminal case against Clark rests on his supposed attempt “to make a false statement or writing by composing and attempting to send a letter falsely claiming the Department of Justice had ‘identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.’”
Editor’s Note: The persistent myth that there was “no widespread election fraud in 2020” has been demonstrated to be false multiple times, most recently in revelations that former Attorney General William Barr and other Department of Justice officials knew about an arrest in Muskegon, Michigan involving thousands of fraudulent voter registrations.
Acting in his official capacity, Clark drafted a letter, presented it to his bosses, and advocated for it to his bosses and to then-President Trump while serving as an acting assistant attorney general of the United States.
That’s the conduct Fulton County’s Far Left Democrat prosecutor wants to criminalize.
Willis claims Clark was not acting “under color of office” because Clark’s supervisors told Clark that sending the letter would be outside the scope of authority of the DOJ and stated that Clark and his Civil Division had no role in election issues.
As Ms. Cleveland put it, Meese’s affidavit eviscerated these arguments, citing the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion that concluded assistant attorneys general are “not limited to any one Division of the Department of Justice or any specific set of duties,” but instead can “be moved from heading most Divisions to instead heading most other Divisions at the discretion of the Attorney General.”
“And, of course,” Meese continued, “the Attorney General reports to the President, which means the President has discretion to assign duties to the AAGs as the President sees fit.”
Thus, as Meese concluded, Clark’s status as an acting assistant attorney general in the Civil Division did not prevent the president from assigning him other duties, including those related to election issues. In fact, “Clark directly supervised 2020 election-related controversies in his capacity as Acting AAG of the Civil Division,” Meese noted.
“In short, taking positions on legal issues relating to the conduct of the 2020 election and consideration of whether to pursue the policy option inherent in the alleged draft letter were not strictly off limits or out of bounds for Mr. Clark,” the affidavit concluded.
Fani Willis’s prosecution of Jeffrey Clark is one of the great travesties of the Democrats’ lawfare against former President Donald Trump and officials of his administration. Imagine the chilling effect this will have on future administrations – well at least Republican administrations – if an Assistant Attorney General or Assistant or Deputy Assistant Cabinet Secretary can be prosecuted in a state court for giving advice to the President that state elected officials of the opposing party don’t like. The mischief would be incalculable, which is why the removal statute was passed and why Mr. Clark should prevail in this case.
Georgia Trump indictments
Fulton County DA Fani Willis
First Amendment Right to Petition
Special Counsel Jack Smith
Merrick Garland
January 6
Obstruction of Official Proceeding
Free Speech
Hunter Biden
Joe Biden administration
January 6 prisoners
Washington DC juries
District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan
Change of venue motion
This whole political prosecution is a charade and a travesty of the justice system...or what remains of it in this country.
Although it's not widely known, it's a matter of historical record that the hypocritical traitor Dishonest Abe Lincoln wanted to send every last black person in America back to Africa. If he had professional black racists and Communist hypocrites like Fani Willis and Fuehrer Barry the Fairy Obama in mind then he was absolutely right.