Hours after the House Jan. 6 committee detailed damning evidence of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to run with his false election claims, former DOJ official and eager Trump stooge Jeffrey Clark found refuge on the friendly airwaves of Tucker Carlson Tonight.
That Clark’s home was raided Wednesday by more than a dozen DOJ officials served as additional fodder for a pity fest.
“They dragged him into the street in his pajamas. What did Jeff Clark do wrong? Was he selling fentanyl? Was he human trafficking on the Mexican border?” Carlson asked, using one of the same arguments he deployed to try to defend Peter Navarro, the ex-Trump adviser who also worked to overturn the 2020 election, when he was taken into custody earlier this month.
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“Jeff Clark did not commit any crime. What he did wrong was calling for an investigation into voter fraud,” Carlson insisted, glossing over Clark’s involvement in Trump’s desperate acts to hold onto power.
According to Clark, his encounter with federal agents began with a “loud, insistent banging at my door” early in the morning.
“I opened the door and asked for the courtesy to be able to put some pants on and was told no, you’ve got to come outside. So I came outside, they swept the house, and eventually let me go back inside and put pants on,” Clark said while the Fox News chyron blared that he “was in his pajamas.” (Curiously, the chyron at another point described Clark, the former assistant attorney general, as a “former Trump employee.”) Clark’s electronic devices were seized during the raid, which he dubbed “highly politicized.”
When Carlson claimed that Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray “have decided to corrupt our most basic institutions on behalf of Joe Biden,” Clark didn’t disagree.
“I just think we are living in an era that I don’t recognize,” he said after noting his past encounters with those two figures. “And increasingly, Tucker, I don’t recognize the country anymore with these kinds of Stasi things happening,” he added, referring to East Germany’s secret police.
Carlson, perhaps seeking to shore up his populist credentials, opted for the more accessible “Stalinist” label when describing the DOJ’s recent moves.
“At some point, somebody’s going to fight back and it’s going to get super-ugly and I pray that it doesn’t happen but I think it probably will,” he predicted. “The whole thing is so sad and I am sorry that you were caught up in it in your pajamas.”
