WASHINGTON, DC - In an administration full of radicals, one stands out in particular: Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke. During her confirmation hearings, Clarke, who is a radical transgender advocate, told Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), in answer to a written question after her confirmation hearing, if she’d ever been arrested or accused of committing a violent crime against any person.” Clarke answered no.
In the words of Maury Povich, “that was a lie.”
According to National Review and The Daily Signal, Clarke was still under oath when she responded to “Questions for the Record” submitted by U.S. senators. Based on records obtained and authenticated by The Daily Signal, Clarke appeared to have lied when she answered no to Cotton’s question.
When Clarke was nominated by Biden on January 7, 2021, and confirmed by the Senate on May 25, 2021, Biden and Kamala Harris touted her as checking off two necessary boxes to qualify her for the position–she was a female, and she was black. Had she been a lesbian, she would have hit the trifecta on the Biden virtue-signaling bingo card.
Biden and Harris promised Clarke would concentrate on fighting alleged “voter suppression” and hate crimes nationwide.
In 2021, Clarke’s ex-husband, Reginald Avery, told Tom Jones of the American Accountability Foundation that Clarke attacked him with a knife on July 4, 2006, at their Maryland home, deeply slicing his finger to the bone.
The Daily Signal reviewed messages and documents showing Clarke was indeed arrested that night. The Daily Signal reached out to Clarke for comment; however, she did not respond.
According to court records obtained by the outlet, a criminal complaint case was initiated against Clarke in the District Court of Maryland for Prince George’s County. However, on October 17, 2006, the Maryland state attorney entered a request to “nolle” the case, which effectively dismissed the charges against Clarke without a trial.
In early 2008, Clarke sought an “Order for Expungement of Police and Court Records” related to the same case.
The Daily Signal obtained a document that showed the order was granted in January 2008 by a district court in Maryland. Under the order, it directs the police to expunge “police records pertaining to [Clarke’s] arrest, detention, or confinement” on or about July 5, 2006, by a “law enforcement officer of the Prince George’s County Police.”
The Daily Signal confirmed the authenticity of the order because it had a “True Test’ stamp on the expungement order, as confirmed by an official at the clerk’s office for the District Court of Maryland for Prince George’s County.
“That’s a real document,” the official said.
Ed Whelan, who holds the Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote in National Review that Clarke’s arrest was expunged under Maryland law; however, he notes that she was arrested for committing a violent crime. He wrote Clarke was duty-bound under federal law to testify truthfully during her confirmation hearing.
At the time of her arrest, Clarke was leading the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund’s voting and election efforts.
There appears to be a conflict in Maryland law, which states that a person doesn’t need to reveal information about an expunged charge when answering a question concerning a criminal charge that did not result in a conviction, The Daily Signal wrote. However, Clarke was under oath in Washington, D.C., not Maryland, when she lied to Sen. Cotton.
Despite that, Maryland Legal Aid, a nonprofit law firm, told The Daily Signal “that it is probably prudent to disclose expungement records when applying for certain types of jobs that require a security clearance, such as government or military jobs…”
Meanwhile, Mark Robbins, who served as general counsel for the OPM under Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, says that a DOJ nominee should absolutely disclose an expunged arrest when specifically asked.
Robbins said that, unlike typical processes where expungement processes are handled on a state basis, confirmation hearings are political. Two sets of questions are submitted to nominees–one from the White House for clearance before a nomination is made and the second from the relevant Senate committee.
Both sets of questions ask about criminal and civil legal actions and also contain an open-ended conclusion question, such as “Is there anything else that could even unfairly be seen as a potential hurdle to confirmation?”
“An arrest with an expungement likely has a background and explanation,” he said. “Why not disclose it? It isn’t particularly relevant what the legal consequence of an arrest becoming public during or after the confirmation process, thus embarrassing the administration and Senate.”
“In my service as general counsel at two federal agencies, if a nominee asked me whether to disclose an arrest and expungement, I certainly would advise to either disclose in the paperwork with an explanation, or at the very least, note for the record that you would like to discuss this personally with someone in the White House or on the Senate committee staff,” Robbins concluded.
According to the Center for Presidential Transition, anyone hired for a federal job is asked to complete a background check, and nominees are also invited to complete either a “Questionnaire for National Security Positions,” the SF-86, or a “Questionnaire for Public Trust Positions,” an SF-85P.
On the SF-86, applicants are directed to report information “regardless of whether the record in your case has been sealed, expunged, or otherwise stricken from the court record, or the charge was dismissed.” The only exception is convictions under the Federal Controlled Substances Act.
In other words, nominees are required to truthfully answer an extensive line of questions regarding any civil or criminal history. Furthermore, as a nominee for a DOJ position, Clarke would have had to fill out a “Questionnaire for non-judicial nominees” from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is submitted prior to the hearing.
That form contains a confidential section, accessible to the Senate Judiciary Committee staff and members, where Clarke could have revealed the expunged information if she had chosen to be truthful.
Given that Republican senators did not raise Clarke’s arrest and subsequent expungement specifically during her confirmation hearing, it is clear that she did not disclose that little fact to them. Had she made the disclosure, Senators would have taken the opportunity to request one-on-one meetings with Clarke to get an explanation. That did not happen.
The Daily Signal spoke with several sources familiar with Clarke’s confirmation process, and they said it does not appear that Clarke disclosed the arrest. This was because not only would they have been aware of the matter but also given Sen. Cotton’s written questions, which were submitted after her confirmation hearing but before a vote on her confirmation.
“It’s beyond strange that Clarke wouldn’t reveal this in the first place,” said Judd Stone, an appellate litigator, former Texas solicitor general, and former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
“Just deeply strange…if you reveal it, and it turns out you can’t get through committee, then they tell you quietly that you can’t proceed with the nomination, it doesn’t go out to the press, you don’t get tarred and feathered, and you go back to what you’re doing.
“I can’t imagine a Republican nomination getting away with this,” Stone added.
In the July 4, 2006 incident, Avery told Jones, head of the American Accountability Foundation, what led to the altercation with Clarke.
“I was seeing another woman,” Avery shared in a May 2021 text message thread. “She was angry. Attacked me with a knife. I instinctively grabbed it. As I said earlier, I’m not blameless.
“That’s the story. That’s what happened. She went to jail,” Avery said of Clarke.
Avery confirmed to Jones that federal authorities never contacted him about the incident.
According to Prince George’s County PD records, someone at Clarke and Avery’s home called the department on nine different occasions between May 2003 and December 2007. Seven calls were for a “threat” or some domestic violence, however most were cleared without a report.
On July 4, 2006, “Mr. Reginald” [Avery] made a call accompanied by a “760” code, which is the department’s clearance code for an arrest.
During Clarke's confirmation, the Daily Signal writes that staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they looked into rumors of an arrest and contacted Avery, who refused to speak to them. They also did not have access to the expungement order or charge dismissal notice.
Clarke was one of Biden’s most controversial nominees, yet still managed to get confirmed. Before her nomination, she had posted many radical and unhinged social media posts, such as calling Alliance Defending Freedom a “hate group”. She referred to Liberty University as a ” fundamentalist Christian school.”
Moreover, she was a staunch defender of Dr. Anthony Fauci and suggested that anyone protesting him should be “publicly identified and named, barred from treatment at any public hospital if/when they fall ill and denied coverage under their insurance:
And she’s the AG for Civil Rights.
She supported the uncorroborated testimony of the unhinged Christine Blasey Ford, who attempted to torpedo the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh:
She submitted testimony to the US Senate slamming then-Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, calling her “unfit to serve” as a justice due to her stance on Roe v Wade, and actually referred to a law designed to protect Down’s Syndrome babies as “draconian.”
She also criticized pro-life laws:
Tucker Carlson, then of Fox News, ran several segments highlighting Clarke’s racist radicalism, including a segment where she organized an event at Harvard University that hosted a professor who accused Jews of persecuting blacks, a move she now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight calls “a mistake.”
Clarke has prosecuted many pro-life activists under the “FACE Act” (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Those arrested include Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven whose house was raided in the early morning hours by automatic weapon-toting FBI agents. Houck was found not guilty by a jury in January 2023.
“When given the option to speak about such traumatic incidents in my life, I have chosen not to,” Clarke said in response to being called out for the lie. “I didn’t believe during my confirmation process and I don’t believe now that I was obligated to share a fully expunged matter from my past.”
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