Senator rips election-denying lawyer protecting Trump: 'You assert privilege willy-nilly'

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called out former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark after Clark insisted that details surrounding a letter aimed at overturning the 2020 presidential election were legally privileged.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Whitehouse questioned Clark about the letter he had drafted while working for the Justice Department, which he suggested should be sent to Georgia, where President Donald Trump was seeking additional votes to reverse former President Joe Biden's victory.

"When you wrote that letter, who in the Civil Division did you contact with respect to its contents?" the senator wondered.

"That is something that would be law enforcement privileged inside the Justice Department," Clark claimed.

"No, it's not," Whitehouse shot back. "I'm entitled to know if you bothered to consult a single lawyer in the Civil Rights Division before you did that."

"In terms of that letter, again, anything related to how that letter was formulated is law enforcement privileged," Clark repeated.

"That just ain't so," Whitehouse remarked. "So let's just say that somebody from outside the department put you up to writing that letter and told you what they wanted in it. What privilege would that require?"

For his part, Clark insisted that no one outside the DOJ prompted him to write the letter to Georgia.

"No one contributed text to you. No one contributed ideas to you. No entity or person asked you to do this?" Whitehouse asked.

"Again, these kinds of things would be part of privilege," Clark claimed.

"No, they wouldn't," the senator said. "You're just wrong about that."

"Well, you can say that, Senator, but I disagree with you," the former DOJ official argued.

"I know, but you've asserted privileges before, and you've been wrong," Whitehouse noted. "You assert privilege willy-nilly with no real basis for it. So, by the way, it's not even conceded that those privileges matter in Congress."

"Those are legitimate questions. I intend to pursue them," he concluded.