Former President Donald Trump’s top environmental lawyer wants a federal appeals court to take a second look at his bid to sideline an ethics case against him for his role in attempting to undermine the 2020 election.
In a petition for rehearing filed Monday, attorneys for Jeffrey Bossert Clark argued that a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit got it wrong when it declined to move the ethics case to federal court. They asked that the full roster of the court’s active judges reconsider the matter in what is known as an en banc rehearing.
Clark’s team said the D.C. Circuit erroneously found that Clark had missed a 30-day deadline for removing civil cases to federal court and argued that the Supreme Court has held that adversary attorney discipline cases are “quasi-criminal” in nature.
“[E]n banc review must be granted to vacate the panel’s decision and hold instead that the removal of a quasi-criminal matter is timely at any point before trial in a case where there is no arraignment,” Clark’s attorneys wrote.
