A Washington court on Friday questioned efforts to push President Donald Trump’s top environmental lawyer to provide documents to support his claims of election fraud ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill.
Three judges hearing arguments in Jeffrey Bossert Clark’s disciplinary case in the D.C. Court of Appeals appeared sympathetic to claims that the former head of the Department of Justice’s environment division could be incriminated by a records request related to a letter questioning Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in Georgia and other swing states.
Clark has claimed protections under the Fifth Amendment, which safeguards against self-incrimination.
“The Fifth Amendment privilege is extraordinarily broad,” said Senior Judge Stephen Glickman, “and I do have difficulty seeing how this subpoena can get around that.”
