Democratic operatives launched an initiative in 2022 effectively aimed at
dissuading lawyers from taking and aiding clients whose success could potentially diminish leftist political power.
Citing the need to “protect democracy,” the 65 Project has so far sought to make examples of those attorneys who helped Trump allies and supporters challenge the
2020 election results, despite recognizing that some attorneys may not actually have violated the legal profession’s ethical rules.
The 65 Project — which
made clear in September that it intends to keep hounding conservative lawyers — has not only publicly smeared accomplished attorneys but filed over 85 bar complaints in hopes of ruining their careers, with some success. Influence Watch highlighted that the outfit has not similarly bothered to target any of those Democratic-aligned lawyers who have challenged elections or election laws in recent years.
Despite the partisan outfit’s supposedly noble aims, its initiative ultimately appears oriented toward depriving political opponents of effective legal representation, as guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment.
There may, however, be a reckoning on the horizon.
America First Legal, run by Stephen Miller, President-elect Donald Trump’s new White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, punched back late last month with bar complaints of its own — against both the managing director of the 65 Project and former Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney, signaling the possibility of mutual combat and/or mutually assured destruction.
Blaze News has explored the fallout of the 65 Project’s lawfare as well as its unintended consequences, not the least of which is balkanization in the legal world and the likelihood of retribution targeting lawyers of another stripe.
What is the 65 Project?
In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, attorneys across the country were involved in efforts to challenge the results, citing
apparent irregularities. Trump allies and supporters filed over 60 lawsuits, which NBC News indicated were championed by solo practitioners and state attorneys general alike.
The 65 Project, named after one total of such lawsuits, was apparently cooked up by Democratic operative
Melissa Moss, a former Democratic National Committee finance director who served in the Clinton administration. The initiative was incubated within LawWorks, a “fiscally sponsored project” of the D.C.-based Franklin Education Forum whose principal officer, as of 2022, was Media Matters founder David Brock, an early adviser for the 65 Project.
Extra to working with billionaire George Soros and other leftists to attack Republicans and
founding a super PAC that spent roughly $85 million on Democrats in the 2020 election, Brock previously did his best in hopes of getting Hillary Clinton elected in 2016. After this failed, Brock’s buddy later challenged the results and claimed that Trump was an illegitimate president — without consequence.
‘It’s a tactic.’
Other early advisers for the 65 Project included former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle; the American Bar Association’s first woman president, Roberta Cooper Ramo; Christine Durham, a Democratic appointee who served on the Utah Supreme Court; and former Republican Paul Rosenzweig, a Department of Homeland Security official in the George W. Bush administration.
The outfit is presently run by Michael Teter, with Moss in an advisory role. Teter
previously worked as campaign manager for former Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl (Wisc.), as Wisconsin field director for former climate czar John Kerry’s failed presidential campaign, and as deputy finance director for the California Democratic Party.
According to its website, the 65 Project is a
bi-partisan effort to protect democracy and preserve the rule of law by deterring future attacks on our electoral system. We are holding accountable Big Lie Lawyers who bring fraudulent and malicious lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results, and working with bar associations to revitalize the disciplinary process so that lawyers, including public officials, who subvert democracy will be punished.
Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post writer who
got caught lying about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and recently likened Trump’s landslide 2024 victory to Adolf Hitler taking power, was among the radicals who celebrated the initiative in early 2022, writing, “The 65Project’s announcement should come as a relief to democracy defenders who think many lawyers failed miserably in their professional obligations.”
“If the bar complaints deter lawyers from helping Trump or other politicians in a future insurrection, the 65Project’s effort will have achieved some much-needed democratic hygiene,” added Rubin.
Blaze News reached out to the 65 Project for comment but did not receive a response by deadline.
The targets (so far)
The 65 Project has filed ethics complaints against scores of attorneys, including Harvard University law professor emeritus
Alan Dershowitz; Trump attorney Boris Epshteyn; John Eastman, the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence; Mississippi’s first female attorney general, Lynn Fitch; Alabama Attorney General Steven Marshall; West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey; Arkansas Lt. Governor Leslie Rutledge; and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.).
Dr. David J. Luban, professor of law and philosophy at Georgetown Law, told Blaze News that the 65 Project complaints “seem to be based on four rules: It’s unethical to file frivolous lawsuits; to make false statements of facts to courts; to make false statements of fact to third parties; and the all-purpose prohibition on conduct involving ‘dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.'”
Dershowitz, who helped advance the case
Lake v. Hobbs, which called for the 2022 Arizona governor’s election to be overturned, told USA Today last year, “It’s a tactic.”
“People will not take on Trump-related cases,” said Dershowitz. “That’s the intention, and that’s the result.”
‘They did file a flagrantly and maliciously false bar complaint against me.’
Harry W. MacDougald and Daniel J. Hartman were among those attorneys targeted by the Democrat-aligned group.
In February 2023, the 65 Project
pressed the State Bar of Georgia to investigate MacDougald’s work in Pearson v. Kemp and Wood V. Raffensperger and to make an example of him.
MacDougald told Blaze News that while ultimately thwarted, the attack on his livelihood nevertheless proved impactful.
“Yes, they did file a flagrantly and maliciously false bar complaint against me, which resulted in false and defamatory publicity against me,” said MacDougald, a managing partner at Caldwell, Carlson, Elliott & DeLoach. “The complaint progressed to the investigative phase and was dismissed by the State Disciplinary Board in August of this year. It is still on their website to this day.”
“Especially shameful are the members of the 65 Project’s Advisory Board, who are all extremely prominent lawyers,” said MacDougald, alluding to Durham, Ramo, and Rosenzweig, as well as to
past advisory board members Stuart Gerson, a former Clinton Justice Department official, and Renee Knake Jefferson, a Democrat serving on the Michigan State University Board of Trustees.
“Even if they did not have personal knowledge of the falsity of the allegations made against me and others, they lent their imprimatur to the false and defamatory allegations made by the 65 Project against me and others and to the wrongful and abusive purposes of the entire project,” added MacDougald.
Last year, the 65 Project also
requested that the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission investigate Hartman for allegedly violating the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct. The project accused Hartman of presenting frivolous claims, making false statements of law and fact, and burdening state and county officials.
Hartman represented the Macomb County Republican Party, voters Jason Ickes and Ken Beyer, and others when they
sued Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) in 2022, requesting that the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan decertify the state’s 2020 presidential election result, recall Biden’s presidential electors, and rerun the election.
The lawsuit alleged that the electronic voting system used by Michigan in the election was not certified or accredited in accordance with
state law and that the lab used to certified the systems was not lawfully authorized to perform testing.
Hartman also acted as counsel for the plaintiffs in
Karamo et al. v. Janice Winfrey, Detroit City Clerk, who sought to halt the use of absentee ballots that are obtained without identification.
When pressed about his targeting by the 65 Project, the Michigan lawyer told Blaze News that he “was sanctioned unjustly” and was “out-resourced 1,000 to 1.”
Although “shunned by some,” Hartman said he has also been “silently applauded by many.”
Taking pieces off the board
Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham Law School, is among the legal experts who raised concerns about the 65 Project and the public nature of its witch hunts.
“That’s basically designed to embarrass these lawyers, and that may have the effect of discouraging lawyers from engaging in politically involved work, even if they’re playing by the rules, because a group like this can misconstrue what they’re doing and embarrass them,” Green
told CNN in 2022.
‘You’re threatening their livelihood.’
MacDougald told Blaze News that Green’s assessment was “100% correct and was in fact the explicitly stated purpose of the 65 Project.”
David Brock
indicated at the outset that the goal was to “not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firm.”
“I think the littler fish are probably more vulnerable to what we’re doing,” Brock told Axios. “You’re threatening their livelihood.”
Hartman also confirmed that the 65 Project has enjoyed some success in this regard.
“Many have told me that it was not worth the risk to participate in election law cases,” Hartman told Blaze News. “They cite the reasons of family, career, or wealth at stake but most often plead lack of time or lack of training.”
Luban does not share Green’s concern. The Georgetown professor struck a contrast between those election-fraud cases where the “complaints simply cut and pasted a bunch of conspiracy theories or affidavits from people who were mad about the 2020 election but had no firsthand evidence of fraud” or “were based on outlandish legal theories” on the one hand, and “serious challenges to state election law, which were not frivolous and involved no dishonesty” on the other hand.
Luban suggested that in the case of the former, the “bar
ought to discipline those lawyers, who were clearly abusing the court system for political reasons.”
“I don’t share Bruce Green’s worry that disciplining them will chill advocacy,” said Luban. “Abusing the legal system to attack a valid election on frivolous or dishonest grounds is conduct that needs to be deterred.”
The trouble, at least for Green, is that in some cases, it may be difficult even for a reasonable lawyer to distinguish between a frivolous claim and a legitimate claim.
“The line between a weak claim or a losing claim on the one hand and a frivolous one on the other is sometimes not so clear,” Green
told USA Today. “You have to have some facts to support your claim, and you have to have some legal arguments that aren’t ridiculous.”
It appears that politically minded actors are keen to hold certain attorneys to a different standard as a mode of lawfare.
When asked whether the legal professional has ever seen anything like this coordinated effort to ruin attorneys professionally and financially, Harman answered in the affirmative, noting, “There have been various instances in American history where lawyers or the legal profession as a whole have been attacked, criticized, or targeted. Some of these are rooted in political or social movements, while others are more individual instances.”
Hartman provided the following examples:
“McCarthy era (1950s): During the Red Scare, lawyers who defended individuals accused of being communists or who advocated for civil rights were often labeled as ‘un-American.’ Some lawyers faced investigations, disbarment, or imprisonment. This era was marked by an overall suspicion of those who defended the constitutional rights of accused persons.”
“Civil rights era: Lawyers advocating for civil rights, particularly those representing black Americans or civil rights organizations like the NAACP, often faced significant hostility and even violence. Figures like [former Supreme Court Justice] Thurgood Marshall and other attorneys who represented civil rights activists were sometimes attacked or threatened, especially in the South.”
“Attacks on defense attorneys representing unpopular clients: Throughout history, defense attorneys representing controversial or unpopular clients (such as those accused of terrorism, murder, or other heinous crimes) have faced public backlash, threats, and sometimes physical violence. In recent years, lawyers representing individuals accused of terrorism or hate crimes have sometimes faced public outrage, as well as harassment online or in person.”
“Ongoing anti-lawyer sentiments and ‘tort reform’: There has been consistent criticism of the legal profession, particularly personal injury lawyers, who are often depicted as promoting ‘frivolous lawsuits.’ This has led to various tort reform movements aimed at limiting certain types of lawsuits. While not physical attacks, these movements often carry negative portrayals of lawyers in political and media narratives.”
“Internet and social media harassment: In recent years, some high-profile lawyers, especially those involved in political cases or defending controversial figures, have been harassed or doxxed online. This type of harassment can extend to threats against the lawyers and their families.”
MacDougald similarly alluded to retaliation efforts against lawyers “in our history such as in the Antebellum or Red Scare or labor unrest periods,” but suggested that earlier attacks were likely “more organic and ad hoc.”
“I doubt that any of the prior campaigns were organized and funded to the same extent as the 65 Project, but I don’t actually know the history so I cannot say for sure,” said MacDougald.
‘Some people are not worthy of representation.’
“While not systemic or government-led, these examples show that attacks, harassment, and criticism directed at lawyers do occur in America, often tied to the cases they take or the issues they represent,” said Hartman.
In terms of the 65 Project, he noted that he has seen “the campaign take out several good lawyers.”
“The 65 Project has effectively kept many lawyers on the sideline who have decided the cost is too high and the likelihood of success is too low,” added Hartman.
Genie is out of the bottle
When asked whether it is possible to put the genie back in the bottle or whether there will be more 65 Project-style complaints in the future, Luban told Blaze News, “We already have: America First Legal has filed an ethics complaint against the head of the 65 Project. They have also filed an ethics complaint against Liz Cheney, for having talked with Cassidy Hutchinson without clearing it with her lawyer, [Stefan] Passantino.”
AFL filed a
bar complaint against Liz Cheney with the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel on Oct. 21, alleging that she violated the D.C. Bar Rule of Professional Conduct 4.2. by communicating with former deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino’s client, Cassidy Hutchinson, without his knowledge or approval.
The conservative nonprofit then
filed a bar complaint against Teter one week later on behalf of Passantino, suggesting that the Utah State Bar should open an investigation into whether the 65 Project:
violated Rule 8.4 of the Utah Rules of Professional conduct by “engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice by seeking to punish lawyers associated with a single client”;
violated Rule 301 of the rules governing the Utah State Bar by “abusing the attorney grievance process to create a ‘culture of deterrence’ and ascribing class-wide misconduct against anyone who seeks to represent President Donald J. Trump and by seeking sanctions for an improper purpose”; and
engaged in conduct “contrary to the standards of professionalism and civility envisioned by the Rules of Professional Conduct.”
When announcing the complaint, AFL
noted, “Mr. Passantino and the other attorneys attacked by Mr. Teter and other, similarly motivated groups sought to represent their clients in the face of widespread condemnation both inside and outside of the legal profession. They embody the highest ideal of the legal profession: that, in our system, everyone is entitled to legal representation.”
“Mr. Teter’s boilerplate complaints appear to exhibit a fundamental lack of professionalism toward his fellow lawyers and an extreme disdain for President Trump and his associates,” continued the conservative nonprofit. “His underlying message is clear: Some people are not worthy of representation, and those who dare to represent them will be punished.”
Gene Hamilton, AFL executive director, said in a statement:
For too long, “lawfare” like that undertaken by the 65 Project and other, similarly motivated groups has chilled attorneys across the country from representing clients or advancing certain lawful positions for those clients. Seeking the personal destruction and financial ruin of another lawyer — simply because of the client he represented or the cause he took up — runs counter to not only the letter and spirit of the law governing the activities of lawyers, but is completely contrary to the way we conduct ourselves in a free society. We seek a return to a world in which lawyers can be lawyers, zealously advocate for their clients, and strive for a better future without fear of harassment or intimidation simply because of the clients or causes they take up. The abuses of the system must stop.
Professor Luban did not remark on the complaint against Teter but noted that the complaint against Cheney “is completely frivolous and dishonest. The no-contact rule only applies to lawyers who are representing a client, which Cheney was not.”
Blaze News reached out to AFL for comment but did not receive a comment by deadline.
Regardless of whether these complaints prove successful, it appears that elements of the right are now willing to respond in kind to the 65 Project and similar initiatives.
“Lawfare and professional attacks will continue,” Hartman told Blaze News.
The prospect of mutual combat might make partisans think twice about seeking the strategic ruination of attorneys, however the remedy may lay elsewhere.
Blaze News senior editor and podcast host Daniel Horowitz of “Conservative Review” told Blaze News, “We need bar reform badly. We cannot continue to have what is essentially a private left-wing fiefdom wielding quasi-governmental authority over the legal profession and the judicial branch of government itself.”
Horowitz further recommended that red states “become sanctuaries for those attorneys who have been targeted prima facie because of their worldview and not because of unethical behavior.”
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