Newsletter: Texas Ruling on Anti-Trans Investigations, Louisiana’s ERIC Withdrawal, and Jeffrey Clark’s Disciplinary Trial

Last week, a Texas appeals court upheld injunctions in a pair of lawsuits that block the state from investigating parents of children receiving gender-affirming care.

Inquiriespress@americanoversight.org

Last week, a Texas appeals court upheld injunctions blocking the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) from investigating parents of transgender children receiving gender-affirming care.

The ruling came in two lawsuits brought by LGBTQ+ families and advocates following Gov. Greg Abbott’s 2022 directive calling for the provision of gender-affirming care to be investigated as child abuse.
American Oversight had submitted amicus briefs in the lawsuits, detailing documents we obtained showing that DFPS staff interpreted Abbott’s directive as a new rule under state law and adopted new policies in response — despite Abbott and DFPS having argued that the directive’s implementation did not constitute an official “rule.”

The records cited in the briefs include emails showing that in the days after Abbott’s directive, DFPS employees were directed to open new investigations into families of children receiving gender-affirming care — and were told not to discuss the cases or investigations over email or text.

The decision to uphold the injunctions in these cases is an important rejection of a policy targeting LGBTQ+ children and their families in Texas.
American Oversight is continuing to investigate threats to LGBTQ+ people, which have multiplied across the country in recent months and years — read more here.

Jeffrey Clark Violated Attorney Ethics Rules, D.C. Bar Finds
Last week, we wrote about ongoing efforts to hold accountable those who sought to overturn the 2020 election — including Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who sought to use the power of the department to advance Trump’s 2020 election lies.

This week, the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary committee found that Clark had violated ethics rules in trying to keep Trump in power. The investigators who brought the charges said they intend to advocate for Clark’s disbarment.
Clark had faced two disciplinary charges related to his efforts to help overturn the 2020 election results: attempting to “engage in conduct involving dishonesty” and attempting to “engage in conduct that would seriously interfere with the administration of justice.”
The D.C. Bar panel’s ruling came after six days of testimony, including from former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former Deputy AG Richard Donoghue, and former Deputy White House Counsel Pat Philbin.

Clark was implicated in the federal election interference case against Trump as “Co-conspirator 4.” We previously uncovered records related to Clark’s post-election scheme to falsely tell state officials that the Justice Department was investigating “significant concerns” that could change the 2020 results, as well as his communications in the days after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Among the records we obtained were an email Clark sent to Rosen and Donoghue on Dec. 28, 2020, which included an attached draft letter that Clark wanted the Justice Department to send to lawmakers in Georgia. The letter was mentioned in the federal indictment of Trump as well as the Fulton County, Ga., indictment.
In an email sent two days after the attack on the Capitol, as Clark was preparing to leave the administration, he told Rosen that “reasonable minds can differ.” Rosen forwarded the email to another senior DOJ official, writing, “It appears he still does not recognize how harmful his actions and proposals were.”

On the Records

Louisiana’s Misinformation-Influenced Withdrawal from ERIC
Text messages we obtained, reported on by Votebeat, provide more evidence of how a falsehood-riddled article on a right-wing website influenced Louisiana’s withdrawal from the nonpartisan Electronic Registration Information Center in 2022.

In January 2022, the Gateway Pundit — a fringe right-wing website — published a series of articles with false claims about ERIC, the voter-list maintenance system. Shortly after the first article was published, Kyle Ardoin, then the Louisiana secretary of state, announced that he would leave ERIC, later claiming it had “nothing to do” with the articles.

The records we obtained suggest otherwise. The day of the first article, Ardoin texted spokesman John Tobler, “I think we suspend our membership in ERIC until we can investigate what they are doing with our data.”

After Ardoin’s office announced Louisiana’s departure from ERIC, Ardoin asked Tobler and another staffer what news outlets had covered the withdrawal. “What did the Gateway Pundit say?” he asked after Tobler sent a list. “I am sure they went all drama on it.”
We previously published documents suggesting a strong connection between the initial Gateway Pundit article and Ardoin’s decision. Learn more about those documents and more in our in-depth report outlining the campaign to dismantle ERIC.

Newsletter: Texas Ruling on Anti-Trans Investigations, Louisiana’s ERIC Withdrawal, and Jeffrey Clark’s Disciplinary Trial

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