Durbin Delivers Opening Statement Slamming Senate Republicans For Holding Yet Another Wasteful Hearing On Arctic Frost

Durbin Delivers Opening Statement Slamming Senate Republicans For Holding Yet Another Wasteful Hearing On Arctic Frost

The Committee heard from majority witness and conspiracy theorist, Jeffrey Clark, who played a key role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today delivered an opening statement at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing entitled "Arctic Frost: Conspiracy and Coordination Against President Trump and the American Right." Instead of allowing Special Prosecutor Jack Smith to testify, the subcommittee heard from Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer who was the Acting Assistant Attorney General for DOJ's Civil Division at the end of 2020 and played a key role in President Trump's failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Last year, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility recommended that Mr. Clark be disbarred, a decision that Mr. Clark has appealed.

In November 2021, Durbin released a report, Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election, which highlighted the extent to which Jeffrey Clark pressured Justice Department leaders to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

In February, Durbin led all Senate Judiciary Democrats in again calling for Smith to testify publicly under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as he has offered to do, as well as requesting unredacted versions of the Special Counsel's report, including Volume II, which has been blocked from public release. Today's subcommittee hearing is the third in a series of eight announced subcommittee hearings to relitigate the 2020 presidential election, despite numerous other pressing issues worth examining within the Committee's jurisdiction.

Key Quotes:

"Earlier this month, President Trump fired Attorney General Bondi for failing to successfully prosecute his political enemies. She has been replaced by Todd Blanche, who in his first weeks as Acting Attorney General is bending over backwards to please his former client… And last Friday, The Atlantic published a bombshell article with devastating new details confirming what this Committee already knows-FBI Director Kash Patel is dangerously unqualified to lead the world's preeminent law-enforcement agency, making us all less safe. Yet, the Republican majority on this Committee is conducting no oversight on [these] issues."

"Instead of hearing from Mr. Smith, who investigated President Trump's failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election, we will hear from Jeffrey Clark, who played a key role in these efforts … He [Mr. Clark] privately met with President Trump to advocate for an unlawful plan to pressure swing state legislatures to reconvene and overturn the already-certified election results. When Acting Attorney General Rosen made clear that DOJ would not engage in any of these election subversion tactics, Mr. Clark revealed that he had convinced President Trump to name him Attorney General if Rosen would not relent."

"This culminated in an Oval Office showdown where President Trump only backed down from his plan to name Mr. Clark Acting Attorney General when he was informed that his entire appointed leadership at DOJ would resign in protest. Mr. Clark's plan was so beyond the pale that President Trump's then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone called it a 'murder-suicide pact.' Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue called it 'bat-shit crazy.'"

"After an eight-month investigation by my staff, we released a 394-page report on this sordid episode titled Subverting Justice. Mr. Clark's actions were not just a stain on DOJ, but on the legal profession as a whole. As a result, I submitted a complaint against Mr. Clark, along with the report and supporting materials, to the D.C. Bar Disciplinary Counsel. I ask unanimous consent to include this complaint in the record."

"Last year, the D.C. Board of Professional Responsibility recommended that Mr. Clark be disbarred, a decision that Mr. Clark has appealed. Mr. Clark's lies and coercive efforts to induce unlawful conduct, among other misconduct, were egregious."

"It is insulting to this Committee that he has been brought here as a witness not to answer for his grave misconduct, but to continue to push President Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. It is bad enough to watch the pathetic conduct of the parade of Trump nominees for lifetime appointments to the federal bench come before the Committee and embarrass themselves in their testimony under oath. They have obviously been warned that any deviation from the Big Lie could be politically, personally fatal, so they sit before this Committee and the cameras and refused to answer probing questions, like 'Who won the popular vote in the 2020 presidential election?' Now this, Jeffrey Clark, the architect of the Big Lie strategy, is front and center, the star witness of the majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee."

Video of Durbin's opening statement is available here.

Audio of Durbin's opening statement is available here.

Footage of Durbin's opening statement is available here for TV Stations.

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