Martin Clarke, director, Office of Contract Compliance, city of Atlanta. (Courtesy photo)

Early in his career as a lawyer for the city of Atlanta, Martin Clarke was fired by Donald Trump in the first episode of the sixth season of his TV show, "The Apprentice."

Clarke has fared much better in the subsequent 13 years, negotiating transactions for the city in real estate, telecommunications technology, cable franchises and other areas of business. On Jan. 8, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms appointed him to oversee how disadvantaged businesses and those owned by minorities and women obtain work for the city.

Directing the city's Office of Contract Compliance is a particularly sensitive job. A federal investigation into city business has produced five guilty pleas and set up two upcoming trials. One guilty plea came from Larry Scott, Clarke's predecessor, who this month was sentenced to two years in prison on charges stemming from his simultaneous work for a company that helped businesses seeking Atlanta city contracts.

Sharon Gay, the local managing partner at Dentons and a top city hall official during the 1990s, told the Daily Report that Clarke's "portfolio of work at the Law Department has given him a solid understanding of the legal framework" for the contract programs.

"However, he is clearly facing a challenge in restoring the integrity of the office," she added.

Clarke told the Daily Report that, despite three ongoing audits, the Office of Contract Compliance continues "to provide great service and work."

"In the meantime, we are implementing changes—including ethics and sensitivity trainings and enhanced outreach to all communities including Asian, Hispanic and Native American businesses," he added. "The office is also arranging information sessions with internal and external stakeholders for needs and performance assessments."

Clarke received his undergraduate degree from Adelphi University in New York and his law degree from George Washington University Law School. He encountered two future high profile lawyers early in his career. The teaching assistant in his first-year legal research and writing class at GW was now-Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. And one of the lawyers who interviewed him for his first job at the Atlanta law department was Stacey Abrams, who turned her narrow loss in the 2018 Georgia governor's race into a voting rights movement.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Clarke has practiced law with big and small law firms in New York and served as an adjunct legal issues professor at Adelphi and other New York colleges. He started work for the city of Atlanta law department in 2005. Since then, his profile states, Clarke has "defended, drafted and administered policies that assisted in getting $6 billion dollars to small women and minority owned businesses" and served as chief counsel at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Clarke also has engaged other ambitions, such as developing a piece of musical theater, a Romeo and Juliet story set to electronic dance music. He also started a company, Mobiletvspot, which Clarke said was initially designed to provide a web space for friends and family to watch TV together. Google Hangouts killed the concept he said, and now he uses the company for his musical and play ideas. Mobiletvspot "has never made a cent or done any business," Clarke added, but "out of an abundance of caution, I have previously sent addendums to the Ethics Department that I have the LLC."

Another side gig for Clarke ended by getting booted by the future 45th president of the United States on national television, followed by a nine-minute interview on a raunchy New York radio show.

The TV episode is a bit of a time capsule, starting with Trump calling his wife Melania and baby son Barron on a flip phone from his limousine. The premise of the show is that Trump, advised by daughter Ivanka, will choose one of 18 contestants for a one-year job at his real estate company, with each episode ending with someone getting fired.

Clarke's boss told the Daily Report at the time that he was on approved leave from the city law department during the filming. But the beginning of the show suggested he wouldn't miss much work.

As the contestants introduce themselves, Clarke asks if he can go to the bathroom. Trump tells him to wait two more minutes, then says to the next contestant, "You see what you're standing next to?"

"You should have waited," Ivanka Trump tells Clarke later.

The players are divided into teams that compete to raise the most money in car washes. Clarke's team, led by a hard-charging contestant named Frank Lombardi, loses and has to sleep in tents outside of a Los Angeles mansion, while the winning team sleeps inside.

The show tightens its focus on Clarke arguing Lombardi, as the project manager, should be blamed for the team's loss, while Lombardi claims Clarke didn't hustle enough in selling car washes. Clarke frequently recites ancient quotations, such as "Seize every opportunity as if it were your last" and "A new broom sweeps clean but an old broom knows the corners."

Martin Clarke (left) and Frank Lombardi plead for their reality show lives before Donald Trump on "The Apprentice" in 2007. (Photo: dailymotion.com)

Ivanka isn't impressed, saying, "I feel like everything you say is rhetoric." At the end, Lombardi and Clarke plead for their reality show lives before Trump. Following his daughter's recommendation, he gives Clarke the signature line, "You're fired."

Trump then tells Clarke he wasn't cut out for "the nitty-gritty" of the real estate business. "As a lawyer, I like you," said Trump. "As a professor, I like you even more. This is what you should be doing."

Clarke appeared on "The Dog House," a New York radio show after his "Apprentice" episode. His goal was apparently to urge listeners to get Trump to bring him back on the show, but Clarke mostly served as the target of homophobic jokes by the two hosts known as "JV and Elvis," according to a recording on YouTube.

"You look like a fag," one host told Clarke, who responded that such comments come from people who "are uncomfortable with their own sexuality."

Later, Clarke called Trump "a brilliant businessman" who knows how to work the media, "like I'm working you guys."

Clarke ignored or sidestepped most of the ugly comments by the hosts, but when they suggested he had been gang-raped by a football team, he responded, "I think I saw them do that to your wife."

The Daily Report asked Clarke about his appearances on "The Apprentice" and the radio show.

He responded: "Throughout my life and career, I have had an embarrassment of riches. Kellyanne Conway taught me, Stacey Abrams hired me, and Donald Trump fired me." He went on to cite deals he's worked on—the city's sale of Ponce City Market, the Underground Atlanta buyback, a public safety radio system overhaul, a video surveillance system build and location agreements for "The Walking Dead."

He added, "Each of these experiences—including 'The Apprentice'—have provided valuable lessons that I carry with me to this day."