Ex-Trump WH lawyer says urged former president not to replace acting AG Barr after losing election

A former attorney in the Trump White House says he urged then-President Trump not to replace acting Attorney General Bill Barr with Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to help him stay in office after losing reelection in 2020.

The former deputy White House counsel, Pat Philbin, gave the account Tuesday at a long-delayed disbarment hearing for Clark, according to Politico. 

"I tried to explain to [Trump] that it was a bad idea for multiple reasons,” Philbin said. “He would be starting down a path of assured failure. ... If by some miracle somehow, it worked, there’d be riots in every major city in the country and it was not an outcome the country would accept.”

Trump considered the move before Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress was set to certify the election.

Philbin said Trump discussed the plan with other officials but did not go through with appointing Clark. 

Clark is one of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case in which Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has indicted them and 16 others over their efforts to challenge the 2020 election results in that state.

Philibin said that every major DOJ official said they would quit if Trump appointed Clark, which caused him to back off. 

“We talked about some of the theories of fraud that were around. They’d been debunked and there wasn’t really any there-there,” Philbin also said regarding the 2020 election results. 

Clark is accused of attempting to engage in dishonest conduct during his role in aftermath of the last presidential election

The Washington, D.C., Office of Disciplinary Counsel is trying to determine whether Clark should be sanctioned.

The hearing was conducted by the counsel's three-member Board of Responsibility.