• Pat Philbin gave his first public testimony about the chaotic final days of the Trump presidency.

Pat Philbin departs from E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse. Philbin, who testified for about two hours on Tuesday, described Clark as wildly misinformed about claims of election fraud — countenancing a theory about “smart thermostats” being used to manipulate voting machines — and not sufficiently cognizant of the havoc it would wreak on the country if his plan succeeded. But he said Clark seemed “100 percent sincere” in his beliefs.

“I believe that he felt that he essentially had a duty,” Philbin said. “I think Jeff’s view was that there was a real crisis in the country and that he was being given an opportunity to do something about it.”

When Philbin warned Clark that there would be riots in every major American city if Trump reversed the outcome of the election, Clark responded, “Well, Pat, that’s what the Insurrection Act is for,” Philbin recalled.

Clark, in Philbin’s telling, was referring to a 19th-century federal law that permits the president to use the military to quell civil unrest, an indication that he recognized the grave implications of his efforts. Though it was Philbin’s first time publicly discussing the exchange, the conversation was captured in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump — without naming either Philbin or Clark, though the identities of both speakers were easily discerned. On Tuesday, Philbin was asked to elaborate on this discussion.

“I don’t think I said anything on the phone. I just thought that that showed a lack of judgment,” he said. “Triggering riots in every major city in America, you’ve got to be really sure about what you’re doing and have no alternatives … In my estimation, that was not the sort of situation we were talking about.”

Philbin was the second witness to testify in a disciplinary proceeding that could result in the loss of Clark’s license to practice law. D.C. Bar investigators have charged him with attempting to coerce DOJ leaders to embrace false claims of election fraud in order to pressure state legislators to consider reversing Trump’s defeat in Georgia and other swing states. Trump, fuming at his DOJ leadership for what he contended was a failure to pursue fraud investigations, repeatedly flirted with appointing Clark as their leader but ultimately backed down amid a mass resignation threat.

Clark has since been charged alongside Trump in Georgia for their efforts to overturn the election, and Clark was identified by Smith as a co-conspirator in the Washington, D.C. case.

Philbin said the mass resignation threat that caused Trump to back down from Clark’s appointment was partially his idea. He recalled that a similar mass resignation threat from his days as a lawyer in the George W. Bush administration over warrantless wiretapping had similarly affected policy decisions. So he said he advised Rosen to take the temperature of DOJ leadership about how they would react if Trump appointed Clark as acting attorney general.

Nearly every top DOJ official indicated they would resign, a significant factor in causing Trump to back off his plan.

Philbin said he sought to convey these realities to Clark in a last-ditch phone call before a confrontational Oval Office meeting with Trump and his top advisers.

“We talked about some of the theories of fraud that were around. They’d been debunked and there wasn’t really any there-there,” Philbin said. “If the president made him acting attorney general … people at DOJ would probably resign, there’s going to be just a massive wave of resignations. People weren’t going to be following him to pursue these theories of fraud.”

Philbin said he was among those who would have resigned.

“It was not a course of action that I could countenance,” Philbin said. “I thought there was not a justification for it. It was a sufficiently bad idea and unjustified interference with the completion of the Electoral College count. I wouldn’t want to be there in the White House any longer participating in that.”

Source: Kyle Cheney, politico.com/news/2024/03/26/white-house-trump-2020-00149195