The Biden administration and Senate Democrats were embarrassed last week after a top DOJ official admitted she falsely testified about a previous arrest.
According to the New York Post, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke made a bombshell admission last week in revealing that despite her insistence during a confirmation hearing that she had never been arrested, she actually had been.
She claimed she chose not to disclose the arrest because her legal record had since been expunged.
Clarke is currently the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, a position she's held since 2021.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) asked Clarke during her 2021 confirmation hearing if she’d "ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person."
Her answer at the time was simply "no."
Clearly, that wasn't the truth, as the Daily Signal last week revealed that Clarke had, in fact, been arrested "in Maryland in relation to a domestic violence complaint back in 2006."
The Justice Department’s Kristen Clarke confirmed on Wednesday that she did not disclose an arrest and expungement during her nomination to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, alleging to CNN that she was a victim of domestic abuse.https://t.co/t2RoIk9UeE
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) May 1, 2024
The New York Post noted:
The outlet cited court documents, her ex-husband Reginald Avery and text messages between Avery and the head of the American Accountability Foundation, a conservative nonprofit group.
Avery told the outlet that his finger was “sliced to the bone” after Clarke allegedly came at him with a knife after he revealed that he was cheating on her.
The charges she faced at the time were ultimately dropped, and after about a year had passed, she filed the paperwork to get her record expunged of the incident.
Though multiple calls for her resignation have surfaced since the Daily Signal's bombshell report, Clarke played the victim card during a recent CNN interview, and then explained why she chose not to disclose the arrest during her Senate confirmation hearing.
"This was a terrorizing and traumatizing period that I have sought to put behind me to promote my personal health, healing and well-being," she said during the interview. "The physical and emotional scars, the emotional abuse and exploitation, and the lying are things that no woman or mother should ever have to endure."
Clarke added, "When given the option to speak about such traumatic incidents in my life, I have chosen not to," the DOJ official said. "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."
Only time will tell if enough pressure builds to force her resignation, as many think should be the outcome of the admission.
