The shocker isn’t that Kristen Clarke lied to the Senate during her confirmation hearings. The shocker is that folks are shocked about it.

What did they think — that she was a nominee of decency? Of character? Of integrity? If only these gobsmacked folks had paid attention to The Patriot Post.

LOL, as they say.

The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan broke the story last week, reporting: “Before becoming one of the Justice Department’s top leaders, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke was allegedly involved in a violent domestic dispute, according to court documents, records, and text messages — an incident that ended in her arrest and was ultimately expunged. During her Senate confirmation, Clarke specifically denied ever having been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime.”

Now she’s accused of lying to the Senate during those confirmation hearings. In written questions to her, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton had asked Clarke point-blank, “Since becoming a legal adult, have you ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person?”

She answered, “No.” Apparently, she forgot the time she was arrested for slashing her husband with a knife.

Details, details. I mean, what’s a little blade play among friends, right?

“Clarke’s ex-husband, Reginald Avery, alleged to the American Accountability Foundation’s Tom Jones in 2021 that Clarke attacked him with a knife,” reports Olohan, “deeply slicing his finger to the bone, on the night of July 4, 2006, while they were married and living in Maryland. … Approximately a year-and-a-half later, Clarke sought an ‘Order for Expungement of Police and Court Records.’ … The district court granted that order in January 2008.”

But that doesn’t mean it never happened. It also doesn’t give Clarke a license to lie before the U.S. Senate during her testimony for the job of United States Assistant Attorney General.

In a dubious damage-controlling statement to CNN Wednesday, Clarke tried to explain herself: “Nearly two decades ago, I was subjected to yearslong abuse and domestic violence at the hands of my ex-husband. I didn’t believe during my confirmation process and I don’t believe now that I was obligated to share a fully expunged matter from my past.”

As the New York Post editorial board put it: “That’s precisely the kind of razor-sharp logic that top Biden appointees are known for. Then again, Clarke’s the same dunderhead who muffed a major question about First Amendment litigation last year, claiming in a congressional hearing to be totally unaware of the lawsuit by the state of Missouri against the president over government efforts against ‘disinformation’ — a huge civil rights issue where Team Biden had lost and was appealing to the Supreme Court.”

Ouch. But all this is the risk we run when we hire by race and not by merit.

“Kristen Clarke is in charge of enforcing civil rights laws,” said Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee on Tuesday evening. “She enforces those laws aggressively against anyone who sneezes near an abortion clinic. And not at all against those who vandalize churches. She lied under oath during her confirmation proceedings, and should resign.”

Thirteen years ago, former Wall Street Journal report and editor James B. Stewart wrote a book that no one paid any attention to: Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America from Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff. In it, he chronicled the national “epidemic of perjury and false statements occurring at the highest levels of business, politics, sports, and culture,” and how our seeming acceptance of this unlawful behavior portends “devastating consequences … for an ever-widening circle that ultimately includes everyone who cares about the truth.”

Stewart, whose politics lean decidedly leftward, dove deeply into four specific cases: Stewart, former George W. Bush administration staffer Scooter Libby, steroid-fed slugger Barry Bonds, and Madoff. Glaringly, though, the author barely mentions during the course of his 473-page book the man whose very public and very glaring perjury blazed a trail for future dissemblers of all stripes: Bill Clinton.

Had the president of the United States been held severely accountable for his criminal behavior under oath, perhaps it would’ve sent a different lesson to these four — and to James Comey and Michael Cohen and Fani Willis and Nathan Wade and Kristen Clarke and everyone else who now seems to think, perjury schmerjury.

“Instead,” as The Federalist’s David Harsanyi writes, “this lifelong unhinged leftist, who spent decades pushing identitarian ideas after college, was confirmed by the Senate. To the surprise of no one, she abused her power and weaponized the DOJ, which targeted elderly peaceful pro-life protesters while giving leftists and antisemites a pass. That’s the real problem.”