Jeff Clark Has An Active Imagination. And So Do His Lawyers.
Yesterday former Trump Justice Department official Jeff “the Oil Spill” Clark noticed an appeal to the 11th Circuit of the order booting him back to Georgia court to face state RICO charges along with Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, and 13 other rando election deniers. He also filed yet another bonkers motion insisting that he is entitled to stay his criminal remand under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
googletag.cmd.push( function() { // Display ad. googletag.display( "div-id-for-top-300x250" ); });Clark has been calling his case a “civil-criminal hybrid” for months, claiming that he was removing not only the criminal case against him, but also the special purpose grand jury which did the original investigation in 2022. If he could only persuade the court of his status as a mythical chimera, he could avail himself of the civil removal standard under 28 USC § 1446(d), which automatically stays the state action.
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Nevertheless, he persisted!
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“Indeed, it was error for the Court to prematurely issue those docket entries—something we assume occurred because the Court was not focused on the applicability of the Rule 62 automatic stay and instead presumed that its remand order automatically became effective instantaneously,” his lawyers sniff, pointing to two civil Supreme Court precedents to bolster their case.
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After an extended harangue, in which Clark rehashes his case and inveighs against the court, he explains that, if Georgia doesn’t like it, they should never have agreed to join the Union:
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AMERICA, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!
In summary and in conclusion, Jeff Clark waited ten days since the September 29 criminal remand to assert his statutory right to an automatic 30 day stay under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He’d now like the court to rule on his petition for stay within four days, so he can get on with his emergency appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. And if Georgia doesn’t like it, the state can just secede.
State of Georgia v. Clark [Docket via Court Listener]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.
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Originally posted on: https://abovethelaw.com/2023/10/jeff-clark-has-an-active-imagination-and-so-do-his-lawyers/