Neal Katyal Responds to Jeffrey Clark Over Burning Man: ‘Worshipping Donald Trump’ is ‘One of the Most Neo-Pagan Rituals of All’
Former Obama Justice Department official Neal Katyal hit back at former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark on MSNBC Tuesday after Clark accused Katyal of engaging in a “neopagan ritual” at Nevada’s Burning Man festival.
After Katyal posted photographs from Burning Man on Twitter this week, Clark — who was arrested in Georgia last month on charges related to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — commented:
Why am I not surprised that Neal Katyal made it a priority to get to a neopagan ritual? See picture below in lower right. Pray that these folks come to the light & realize that the only path is through and to our Lord. We are all fallen and need God, and to repent as a Nation.
Asked by MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday for his thoughts on the comment, Katyal said, “First of all, I think Jeff Clark was a key participant, Lawrence, in one of the most neo-pagan rituals of all, which is worshipping Donald Trump.”
He continued:
You’d think that a guy who’s simultaneously facing disbarment, state criminal charges, and the possibility of additional federal charges might have something better to do than to troll people, and frankly, to troll people poorly online. I guess, you know, in a way, I feel for him. He’s under an enormous strain of criminal indictment and if I could advise him I’d say, ‘Look, you’re in a hole, stop digging,’ but I realize it’s kind of futile because that’s the kind of behavior that landed him in jail in Georgia in the first place.
After joking that Clark was upset he couldn’t attend Burning Man “because he’s too busy turning himself into the Fulton County Jail,” Katyal added:
But on a more serious note, I’ve heard this garbage my whole life, Lawrence. ‘Go home. Go back to where you came from. Pray to the one true God, lord,’ that kind of stuff, and I’ve also seen the other side of that. I went to a Catholic school in Chicago, where I never heard that kind of garbage there. A place where people respected my faith and respected other faiths, and when I was at the Justice Department, that was certainly the mission of the department for everyone there.
Katyal concluded, “This guy is not just a constitutional menace, he’s also a criminal, and you know, at the end of this, I guess I’d invite Mr. Clark to attend Burning Man next year to see what it’s about, but I have a strong suspicion that he might not be allowed to leave the state of Georgia by next summer.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
