GOP Sens Demand DOJ Fire Kristen Clarke For Lying Under Oath

Nearly a dozen Republican senators wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week demanding the Justice Department chief fire the agency’s top official for civil rights.

On Friday, lawmakers led by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused Clarke lying under oath during her 2021 confirmation process to serve as assistant attorney general for civil rights.

“During her nomination to her current role, Ms. Clarke was asked if she had ‘ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person,’” senators wrote. “Ms. Clarke was unequivocal, responding under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee, ‘No.’ That was a lie.”

“Ms. Clarke has now admitted that she was arrested in 2006 for attacking and injuring someone with a knife,” the letter explained.

“It has also recently come to light that, shortly before the full Senate voted on her nomination, Ms. Clarke and her publicist contacted the man she attacked in an attempt to cover up her false testimony,” lawmakers added.

Senators cited a spring report from Daily Signal author and reporter Mary Margaret Olohan, who wrote in May that Clarke asked her ex-husband “for a statement saying that she was not a domestic abuser during a confirmation process where she did not disclose her past arrest.” Olohan’s reporting was based on an investigation from the American Accountability Foundation, which found Clarke pulled a knife on her ex-husband, Reginald Avery, “deeply slicing his finger to the bone” on July 4, 2006, when the pair were married and living together in Maryland.

The incident “ended in her arrest and was ultimately expunged,” Olohan reported in April. But “during her Senate confirmation, Clarke specifically denied ever having been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime.”

Now Republican senators are calling on the attorney general to remove Clarke from her Senate-confirmed role over the allegations that she lied to lawmakers to get the job three years ago.

Breitbart reported exclusively on the letter before it was made public Friday.

“Clarke offered an exclusive statement to leftwing CNN in May — seeking to counter criticism against her — in which she admitted she had been arrested but argued that she was not required to disclose that fact because the arrest was later expunged,” Breitbart wrote. But “an expungement is a civil action and is not a pardon. Records that have been expunged are ‘destroyed or sealed,’ according to Black’s Law Dictionary, in a manner that blocks the public from accessing them or verifying their existence. Multiple justifications exist for expungement by a judge.”

Republicans in the House failed to hold President Joe Biden’s attorney general in “inherent contempt” last week over Garland’s refusal to turn over the audio recordings between Biden and special counsel Robert Hur. In February, Hur wrapped up a federal investigation into the president’s mishandling of classified material and concluded at 81, Biden was too senile to face federal charges. Hur’s report based on multiple interviews in October said the president struggled to recall when he was vice president, forgot the timeline of his son’s death “even within several years,” and had a “hazy” recollection “when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”

“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,” Hur’s team wrote. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who introduced the contempt resolution which failed last week, promised to bring the measure back to the floor later this year when more Republicans are present.

“I have refiled the resolution and will be calling it up again in a couple of weeks when Congress is back in session and Members return,” she said.

Another one of President Biden’s appointees has been accused of lying to Congress during their confirmation process. In June, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., confronted Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Tracy Stone-Manning over her role in a 1989 Idaho tree spiking case. Tree spiking refers to a form of ecoterrorism wherein far-left activists stick metal rods into trees which explode the bark with deadly projectiles when processed for logging.

Stone-Manning had told lawmakers in her written testimony for the job that she had “never been arrested or charged and to my knowledge I have never been the target of such an investigation.” In 1989, however, she was a primary subject in an Idaho tree-spiking ring that led to a plea deal with federal prosecutors in 1993.

“What I don’t understand is why we’re not looking at the last three and a half years now,” she said at a hearing with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month.

“Here’s why,” Hawley said, “it’s because people are killed in these kinds of incidents. It is an act of terrorism. A special agent in charge found that you were involved. You lied to this committee.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.