The Daily Fuckup

Jeffrey Clark’s Dec. 28, 2020 draft letter is a clean record of how the post-election pressure campaign tried to work through the Justice Department. The draft was sent to then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and it proposed a letter to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, House Speaker David Ralston, and Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller. In the draft, DOJ would have said it had “taken notice” of alleged election “irregularities” and urged state leaders to call a special legislative session to examine those claims and consider next steps. DOJ leadership rejected the proposal. ([congress.gov](https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/117th-congress/house-report/200/1))

The timing matters. By the day Clark circulated the draft, more than 60 courts had rejected Trump campaign and allied fraud claims, and the Electoral College had already met and voted. The House report on Clark says the proposed letter was inaccurate and ran against established department policy. That is the key fact here: the document did not show DOJ had confirmed fraud. It showed an effort to use DOJ’s letterhead and authority to keep an already failed election challenge alive. ([congress.gov](https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/117th-congress/house-report/200/1))

The draft also sketched a broader plan. The committee report says Clark recommended copying the same approach to other states. But Rosen and Donoghue refused to send it. The paper trail is important because it shows the pressure campaign moving from argument to draft government action, then stalling when DOJ leadership said no. ([congress.gov](https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/117th-congress/house-report/200/1))