Federal Agents Search Lorton Home Of Trump Justice Department Official

LORTON, VA — Federal agents conducted a search Wednesday morning of the Lorton home of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who played a role in President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020, according to reports.

Russ Vought, who served as Trump’s White House budget director and now works with Clark at the Center for Renewing America, tweeted Thursday afternoon that more than a dozen law enforcement officials from the Department of Justice searched Clark’s house Wednesday in a predawn raid — “put him in the streets in his pj's, and took his electronic devices.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington told CNN that “there was law enforcement activity in the vicinity” of Clark’s home but declined to comment on any particular person or activity.

Clark met with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in February, but pleaded the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during his deposition.

He was the Trump-appointed assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, who in December 2020 became the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division.

In late December 2020, Clark urged the then-acting attorney general, Jeff Rosen, to send a letter to top Georgia officials calling for a special session of the legislature.

The letter claimed the department had found evidence of voter fraud that could have changed the outcome of the presidential race in several states, and it implied that Georgia’s legislature could hold a special session overriding the declared outcome of its presidential ballot to send pro-Trump electors to Washington.

Clark’s actions led to a confrontation at the White House on Jan. 3, 2021, when senior Justice Department officials told Trump they would resign if the president appointed Clark in place of Rosen, who was refusing to legitimize Trump’s fraud claims.

Prior to joining the Trump administration, Clark was lead counsel on BP’s appeal of the historic damages awarded in the Deepwater Horizon environmental disaster case, which was prosecuted by the same division of the Justice Department that Clark ran.

In the George W. Bush administration, Clark served as deputy assistant attorney general in the same division of the Justice Department from 2001 to 2005.