A Washington, D.C., legal panel on Thursday found former Trump administration Justice Department senior official Jeffrey Clark violated at least one attorney ethics rule during a bid to enlist the agency to examine alleged election irregularities in 2020.

The finding is preliminary and came on the eighth day of testimony over Clark’s attempt to use the DOJ in the final days of Trump’s term to draft a letter to Georgia officials claiming that the agency “identified significant concerns” that may have altered the election in Georgia or other states.

Hamilton “Phil” Fox, the head of the district’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which brought the civil charges, said he would seek to have Clark disbarred. The three-member committee for the District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility found that Clark’s conduct violated at least one attorney ethics rule.

Defense attorney Harry MacDougald, who also represents Clark as a client in his criminal case in Georgia, where he is charged alongside former President Donald Trump and several others in a sweeping racketeering indictment, denied that Clark violated any ethics rule. MacDougald also sought to prove throughout the course of the trial that there was a genuine internal dispute at the Justice Department surrounding the results of the 2020 election.

MacDougald for days stressed that a decision to penalize his client over the case brought by Fox would create a “chilling effect” for lawyers merely attempting to serve their clients, and he repeated such claims on Thursday in his closing arguments.

“Mr. Clark, who would probably be making over a million dollars a year leading the environmental Administrative Law Group at a major D.C. law firm. But for this matter he has been subjected to endless trouble, public ridicule and opprobrium,” MacDougald said.

A spokeswoman for the Center for Renewing America, a conservative group where Clark is a senior fellow of litigation, told the Washington Examiner that the panel’s decision opens President Joe Biden‘s staffers and legal advisers up for liability.

It’s “important to point out that this now opens the door for current Biden staffers to be disbarred for advising Biden,” said Rachel Cauley, communications director and fellow for CRA.

The panel will recommend specific sanctions at a later date, which could include the suspension or revocation of Clark’s license. Any sanction must first be approved by the full board and a Washington, D.C., appeals court.

Last week and this week, Clark’s defense counsel brought forward experts to testify, including Donald Elliot, a former general counsel to the Environmental Protection Agency who said the gray area in which Clark operated at the DOJ was necessary for a functioning agency.

“Because I think it’s important that we have the free and open exchange of ideas within agencies … but I think that … one of the traditions in the United States is that even false ideas are protected when they contribute to the debate,” Elliot added.

After Trump lost the 2020 election, he began meeting with Clark to discuss the former president’s potential efforts to use the DOJ to support his claim of election fraud. Eventually, Trump indicated he was considering making Clark acting attorney general after the December resignation of then-Attorney General Bill Barr.

Clark told two of his superiors, acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and Rosen’s deputy Richard Donoghue, that if they sent his draft letter to Georgia officials, he would decline Trump’s offer to lead the DOJ, an effort that Fox claimed could have thrown into doubt the peaceful transfer of power.

“Think of the chaos that would have ensued,” Fox said, noting that the mere act of planning these events amounted to an ethical violation on Clark’s part.

The decision to recommend discipline for Clark comes one week after a judge in California found former Trump campaign attorney John Eastman, who orchestrated a novel legal theory to contest the 2020 race until officials and courts were able to weigh election fraud allegations, should be disbarred for his actions around that time. Eastman is also a co-defendant in the Georgia case. Trump, Clark, and Eastman have pleaded not guilty to the charges there.

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The Association of Mature American Citizens, a conservative advocacy group, said Eastman and Clark “entered a storm as many of their peers turned a blind eye” in the days after Trump lost the 2020 election, according to a Thursday afternoon statement.

“Eastman and Clark were two such men of exceptional character who rose to the occasion and heeded the call [of] reasonable enquiries into widespread allegations of election fraud affecting the 2020 race, but the rich heritage of their forefathers – who also sacrificed a great deal when faced with long odds, to preserve the cause of freedom,” the group said.