Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who is accused of trying to use the Justice Department to lean on Georgia to block its electoral count, is one of many defendants caught up in the Georgia racketeering case targeting former President Donald Trump and his associates. But he has filed an emergency motion to try to block his arrest and give himself extra time to try to get the case removed to another jurisdiction.
What really stunned MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell, though, was the disrespectful way that Clark treated the judge presiding over the case.
"Jeffrey Clark's pleading to the same federal judge about being arrested is like the rest of Jeffrey Clark's legal thinking that got him indicted: legally farfetched, and also astonishingly childish," said O'Donnell on "The Last Word" Tuesday evening. "Jeffrey Clark's emergency motion to avoid arrest did something that, and a lifetime of reading such motions, I, for one, have never seen before. He gave the judge a deadline. Jeffrey Clark filed his motion in the middle of the night last night, when pretty much every federal judge in the continental United States is sound asleep. And he gave the judge a deadline of 5:00pm today. Jeffrey Clark asked the judge, quote, to 'grant a stay, or a temporary restraining order, against Fulton County on or before 5:00pm Tuesday, August 22nd.'"
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"I have never held a motion in my hands in which a criminal defendant gives a judge a deadline of 5:00pm on the day the motion was filed, or a deadline of anytime," said O'Donnell. "Not surprisingly, Judge Steve Jones ignored Jeffrey Clark's deadline. And as crazy as it sounds to give a judge a deadline, Jeffrey Clark's reason, stated in writing, for the deadline, is the single most childish thing, maybe the only childish thing, I have ever seen in a criminal defendant put in writing to a judge."
Specifically, said O'Donnell, Clark's motion says the deadline is necessary because Clark should not have to be put through "the choice of making rushed travel arrangements to fly into Atlanta or instead risking being labeled a fugitive" — an argument that O'Donnell found silly.
"Delta Air Lines, the third biggest airline in the United States of America, which is based in Atlanta, has made Atlanta possibly the most reachable city in the United States of America," said O'Donnell. "You can be on a flight to Atlanta from anywhere in America two hours after someone tells you you need to go. You could be on a flight to Atlanta from anywhere in the world the same day you get the word, you have to get to Atlanta. But not Jeffrey Clark. Being a criminal co-defendant in an alleged criminal enterprise to defraud the United States of America and to defraud the State of Georgia should not force Jeffrey Clark to make rushed travel arrangements, to fly into Atlanta."
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