Yes-Man to Dismantling Democracy
Introduction: The Quiet Coup of Jeffrey Clark
In the fevered aftermath of the 2020 election — which Joe Biden won fair and square — a strange inversion took root in the MAGA world. The loudest cries of “Stop the Steal!” were not defensive but confessional. The very people shouting about rigged elections and deep-state conspiracies were themselves engaged in the most sophisticated attempt to actually steal an election in modern American history.
Psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, in The More Dangerous Case of Donald J. Trump, calls this pattern a psychological confession: a defense mechanism where the guilty project their own misdeeds onto others. Trump perfected this. His inner circle — and his MAGA echo chamber — followed suit, chanting delusions until their red faces turned liberal blue. Every accusation became an admission, every rally cry a mirror of their intent.
Among these enablers was Jeffrey Clark, a little-known Justice Department lawyer who saw in Trump’s chaos an opening for personal ascension. While Trump raged publicly, Clark plotted quietly. He drafted the letter that could have overturned the will of millions — a document falsely claiming the DOJ had “found irregularities” in state election results, urging Republican legislatures to submit fake electors. This was not rhetoric; it was actionable sedition by memo.
Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Carol Leonnig, in her new book Injustice, exposes how Trump’s first term broke the spine of the Department of Justice — and how figures like Clark were the instruments of that internal collapse. Clark’s attempt to weaponize the DOJ against the American electorate wasn’t a rogue act; it was the next phase in a long campaign to convert the machinery of justice into a partisan tool. Leonnig and Davis describe the department as “pressed into a defensive crouch,” its investigators retreating in fear while partisans and enablers shredded its core.
In this ecosystem of decay, Clark was the model functionary — not a firebrand like Bannon, nor a mogul like Musk, but something more insidious: the competent yes-man. He knew just enough law to unmake it. He had just enough authority to corrode the system that gave it to him.
This is why the most dangerous dismantlers aren’t always the loudest or richest. They are the ones who understand the machinery of democracy well enough to quietly reverse its gears. Clark didn’t storm the Capitol; he tried to rewrite the paperwork that would make the coup legal.
And in that act — cold, procedural, cloaked in the dull language of bureaucracy — lies the real danger.
Jeffrey Clark wasn’t just a footnote to the coup. He was its penman.
The Houses of Wreckage
In my upcoming series, The Houses of Wreckage, these houses are not made of brick or stone. They are the living ruins of democracy — dynasties of wealth, ideology, and corruption that have coalesced into the first corporate nation-state. Each House wields a unique form of power: money, media, law, technology, or military might. Together, they are dismantling the systems that once safeguarded collective freedom and conscience.
They do not stand in opposition. They collaborate, collide, and conspire — each playing its role in the great disassembly of democratic order.
In the unfolding saga of the Dismantlers — the network of actors tearing democracy apart from within — Jeffrey Clark occupies a unique role. Far from the high-profile oligarchs or ideological-architects, Clark is a legal functionary turned servant to power: the perfect tool of a system wide collapse rather than its visible face.
The Dismantler: Jeffrey Clark
While Jeffrey Clark is not a founder of one of these Houses, he plays a vital role in the collective assault on democracy. He’s a functionary, a faithful scribe of the wreckage. A man whose power exists only in proximity to greater darkness.
Once an obscure environmental lawyer, Clark became one of Trump’s most willing instruments in the attempted coup of 2020. His ambition wasn’t born of vision but of obedience. He wrote the draft letters that sought to turn the Department of Justice into Trump’s personal election enforcer. He tried to replace the will of the people with the will of one man.
He is not an architect of authoritarianism — he is its courier. His strength comes from submission, his loyalty forged from fear.
His Role in the MAGA Dismantling Project
- Jeffrey Clark, a lawyer who rose to the post of Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division and later Acting Head of the Civil Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ), became central in the aftermath of the 2020 election. CBS News+2Wikipedia+2
- When Donald Trump was seeking to overturn the election, Clark drafted a letter to state officials (e.g., in Georgia) falsely claiming the DOJ had identified significant irregularities, and urging state legislatures to convene and send alternate slates of electors. Wikipedia+1
- Senior DOJ officials refused to sign. The effort stalled — but the attempt itself reveals something deeper: Clark tried to weaponize the justice system as a tool of partisan triumph rather than impartial law. The Washington Post+1
- The D.C. Bar disciplinary board described his actions as tantamount to a “coup attempt at the Department of Justice.” CBS News+1
- Today Clark remains a part of the MAGA-movement’s regulatory and legal ecosystem — a functionary who helps reshape system rules after the fact (e.g., via the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs). Politico
The Corrupted Archetype: The False Priest of Law
Clark’s corrupted archetype is the False Priest of Law — a man who dresses deception in the robes of legitimacy.
He speaks in the language of statutes and codes, but the spirit that animates him is not justice — it’s servitude to power.
In mythic terms, he’s the temple scribe who alters the sacred text for the king. The one who swaps divine truth for political convenience. His corruption lies not in his ignorance, but in his precision: he knows exactly how far he can twist the law before it breaks — and he does it anyway.
Imagine him by candlelight, ink-stained fingers drafting decrees that warp democracy into autocracy. He believes he’s preserving order, but he’s merely embalming it.
Mechanisms of Control
- Legal Obfuscation: Clark cloaks tyranny in legalese — using the complexity of law to confuse and pacify.
- False Legitimacy: He gives despotic intent the illusion of due process.
- Servile Ambition: His hunger for proximity to power makes him a perfect vessel — a man who mistakes subservience for strategy.
- Emotional Contagion: He feeds the fantasy that Trump’s authority is righteous and ordained — a story that infects millions desperate for certainty.
House Alignment
Clark does not command a House of his own. He is an emissary of the House of Trump, a low-ranking executor in its decaying court.
Yet his role is essential. Without men like him — the legal clerics who translate authoritarian will into procedural form — the chaos of Trumpism could not pass as governance.
He is proof that the downfall of democracy does not depend solely on tyrants. It depends on the servants who obey them.
Closing Reflection: The Dismantler in the Mirror
History rarely remembers the clerks. Their signatures fade, their titles dissolve — but their damage endures. Jeffrey Clark reminds us that democracy doesn’t only fall to mobs or monarchs; it erodes under the quiet compliance of men who mistake obedience for duty. He is the bureaucratic hand of the coup — the man who gave Trump’s delusion the illusion of legality.
In every age, the tyrant needs his scribes — those who translate madness into policy and treason into paperwork. Clark played that role without hesitation. And that is why he belongs among The Dismantlers: not as a master of chaos, but as the instrument that makes chaos look official.
If America forgets the Jeffreys — the Yes Men of power — we will wake one day to find the republic signed away, not by fire or sword, but by ink.
🜂 About the Houses of Wreckage
The Houses of Wreckage is an illustrated myth-political universe I’m building to expose the forces dismantling democracy from within. Each “House” represents a faction of power — oligarchs, ideologues, bureaucrats, and zealots — whose doctrines, wealth, and control mechanisms intertwine to form the first corporate nation-state.
The project is progressing through the Authoritarian Greeting Card Series that is available at my shop: The Quip Collection (you can find it here or on Etsy). Each card is a four-panel snapshot of one dismantler at work: part political cartoon, part moral autopsy. These pieces will later expand into smaller graphic novels, each revealing a different House — its corrupted archetype, methods of control, alliances, and internal fractures.
The series is a mirror of our times — a modern mythology of collapse — where billionaires play gods, bureaucrats act as priests of procedure, and ordinary citizens must reclaim the spark of sapience before the whole edifice falls.
Also, be sure check out the first graphic novel in this series: The Sapient Zombie Survival Guide.
Animations made with Genolve.
