On Friday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis responded in a blistering filing to Donald Trump ally and former DOJ civil division head Jeffrey Clark in his attempt to have his charges in the Georgia election racketeering case removed to federal court.
Clark is trying to claim that he was acting within the scope of his federal office, making the case a federal matter. But Willis' filing casts doubt on that claim, by pointing out he was not using any legitimate federal authority when he tried to use the DOJ to lean on states to reject their own election results.
"In short, the defendant sought to peddle a lie and place the imprimatur of the Department of Justice upon that lie," said the filing. "He was told by the chief officers of the DOJ that his claim was a lie, that he did not have authority to make the claim at all, and that it was not the DOJ’s role to make such a claim, but he persisted in attempting to send the letter containing his claim anyway. Although the defendant exceeded the scope of his own authority and the authority of the entire Department of Justice, he argues to this Court that he was somehow acting under color of office and taking actions that were necessary and proper to his duties."
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"In attempting to make such a showing, the significant problem faced by this defendant is that he was explicitly told by his immediate superiors in the Department of Justice (1) that what he was attempting to do was outside the scope of his authority within the DOJ, (2) that he was actually attempting to take actions outside the authority of the DOJ as a whole, (3) that it was 'entirely unacceptable,' 'inappropriate,' and 'irresponsible,' (4) that 'what he was proposing was nothing less than the Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election,' and, perhaps most crucially, (5) that he was making a central claim that was entirely untrue and 'completely at odds' with the results of actual DOJ investigations," said the filing. "The defendant was told these things more than once."
The filing concludes by saying that, far from acting under the legitimate authority of his office, Clark's schemes "demonstrate his willful and persistent attempts to abuse immense sources of federal power in order to interfere with the State of Georgia’s supervision of its own elections."
This comes after a federal judge shot down a similar move by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, also charged in the Georgia election case, to have his charges moved to a federal venue.
