By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney Jeffrey Clark, a senior U.S. Justice Department official during Donald Trump's presidency, should have his law license suspended for two years for acting dishonestly in his efforts to help the former president overturn his 2020 election defeat, a Washington legal panel recommended on Thursday.
Clark acted with "extraordinary recklessness" in his attempts to send a letter in December 2020 and January 2021 falsely claiming that the Justice Department had identified concerns about the integrity of the election, a three-member committee of District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility said.
The board handles attorney ethics cases involving lawyers in Washington. The panel's recommendation will now be considered by the full D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility and then a Washington appeals court.
Trump, the Republican candidate in the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, has made false claims of widespread voter fraud in the election won by Democrat Joe Biden in November 2020.
The panel stopped short of recommending that Clark lose his law license, as the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which brought ethics charges against Clark, had recommended. It also found that Clark's conduct was not as bad as that of former Trump lawyers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, who have also faced attorney ethics charges for attempting to subvert the election results.
Clark, who Trump considered naming acting attorney general in the final days of his presidency, has denied violating attorney ethics rules. His lawyers said in a statement on Thursday that the ethics case was "unlawful on many grounds" and improperly delved into confidential conversations between Justice Department officials and Trump.