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Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark Weighs in Legal Challenges to Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization” Fund 57%
5/30/2026, 4:13:37 AM
BS Summary: This video contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Negativity Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with Overconfidence Bias as the most egregious example at 24.9% saturation with 224 hits. Analysis detected 1,865 faulty-reasoning hits from 901 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 54.1% and a BS Rank of 57% (7,307 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 56.50% of the video peer group.
And joining me now with more NDD
contributor Jeffrey Clark, vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project and former assistant attorney general at the DOJ.
Jeffrey, thank you so much for joining us.
Great to see you again.
Delving right in here, what do you make of the judge's order today?
>> Well, the judge's order is very preliminary.
As your prior guest indicated, 35 former federal judges came in and said, "Hey, there's fraud here. You have to reopen this."
I don't think they remotely have legal standing to do that.
I can unpack that more, but the judge basically called for an explanation from DOJ.
So, DOJ has been put on a on a schedule to produce a brief and respond to the judge's concerns that she was kind of hoodwinked here in terms of kind of letting this case be dismissed.
But, the idea that the that the 35 judges have the ability to complain makes no sense.
I mean, they the idea that the judge could decide sua
sponte, which means on her own, to take another look at this, you know, that can be done, although the rule under which that would occur, Rule 60B of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Tiffany, is very narrow.
It's very difficult to get Rule 60B relief.
So, I think that at the end of the day, the judge may back away here and realize that DOJ had the power to dismiss this case, and the federal judges, they're just third-party intermeddlers.
They have nothing to do with this case.
Their rights are not affected.
They should really just butt out.
>> And Jeffrey, now US District Judge Kathleen Williams is considering opening President Trump's IRS case as well.
Do you think this will go anywhere?
>> Well, I think on on that front, you know, it's a it's a similar kind of situation
you know, that's the the But the sort of starting point for the the settlement, President Trump files an action against the IRS.
And the judge raises some questions about it, but you can always engage in an out-of-court settlement.
You don't need to have judicial approval to do that.
And so the parties said, "Hey, we want this case dismissed. It's been settled." Uh you know, she agreed to dismiss that case.
It should be over.
There's only one situation I know of right off the top of my head where a judge doesn't dismiss.
And that's when the judge is charged with protecting absent class members.
So uh you know, if you're talking about a class action because you know, there are only lawyers uh and sometimes like a few class representatives right in front of the court and then there could be hundreds, thousands of people who are in the class.
The courts will look at that and they'll decide, "Look, you can't just dismiss an action out from under me.
I have to look out uh at whether that's really in the interest of the other people in the class."
But there's no class action here. There's just President Trump.
He wanted to get rid of it. DOJ wanted to get rid of it. Uh and that should be the end of the matter.
>> And where do you think these cases go from here?
Do you think this could end up in front of the Supreme Court?
>> It could uh conceivably, but I've looked at the brief that was filed by uh the judges and they're relying on a case that's called Kem versus Wilder, K E M.
And in that case, the 11th Circuit, which is the circuit that the appellate circuit that sits above federal courts, federal district courts in in Florida uh said was in extraordinary circumstances, a non-party whose interests are directly affected can get Rule 60B relief theoretically.
But in that case, they said that the third party who wasn't before the court didn't have the ability to get that kind of relief because their interests weren't directly affected.
And that party actually had uh indemnification that was was the hook in terms of like what was happening in that case.
Here, the federal judges have no skin in the game, Tiffany, zero.
They're just people like looking at the news and seeing what happened in the case, and they're trying to butt into it.
That's a totally different situation, and there's no way that that meets the extraordinary uh test of someone whose interests are directly affected when they're not a party to the case.
>> So, in about a minute here, do they have a case?
>> I don't believe they have a case, but the judge has power on her own to decide that there was some kind of fraud on the court.
I think it would be quite the stretch for the judge to say that, but, you know, buckle up, stay tuned, see what she says.
If she says that, then I have no doubt that the Solicitor General in the Justice Department is going to authorize appeal, and they're going to go right up to the 11th Circuit to say that the judge erred in saying that, Tiffany.
>> Mr. Jeffrey Clark, thank you so much for joining us.
>> Good to be here.
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