By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations:
If Donald Trump will get previous Kamala Harris on Nov. 5, he’ll doubtless face a fiercer opponent in courtroom – her marketing campaign lawyer, Marc Elias.
The longtime Democratic Celebration lawyer has already filed greater than 60 preelection lawsuits to cease Trump from changing into president once more by combatting what he calls Republican “voter suppression” efforts akin to requiring voters to offer identification on the polls. Echoing a typical Democratic speaking level, Elias maintains that such necessities are “racist” methods designed to make it more durable for minorities to vote.
On the similar time, Elias has been sending letters to election officers in Georgia and different key swing states threatening authorized motion in the event that they uphold challenges to voter rolls to take away noncitizens and different ineligible registrants. Some Georgia officers complain that his intimidation techniques are interfering with county registrars’ capacity to test the {qualifications} of voters.
If Trump is said the winner, the hard-charging lawyer threatens to overturn his election by deploying a military of greater than 75 legal professionals to sue for poll recounts in a number of swing states. Trump, in flip, has threatened to lock Elias up for election interference, as ABC Information moderator David Muir identified in final month’s presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris.
Elias symbolizes the rising affect of lawfare on U.S. elections as each events are turning more and more to the courts to realize an edge. In response to a newly disclosed Republican Nationwide Committee memo, the Trump marketing campaign has filed or joined 123 election lawsuits in 26 states, 82 of that are in battleground states, to fight what it describes as voter fraud. It has additionally employed hundreds of legal professionals to fend off what a Trump lawyer expects will likely be “an onslaught of litigation” from the Harris marketing campaign contesting the outcomes of the election. In fact, that military of legal professionals will even be used to push recounts ought to Trump lose.
Election consultants say that these GOP efforts – fueled, partially, by Trump’s declare that Democrats stole the 2020 election – are enjoying catch-up. Democrats have lengthy been on the forefront of methods to make use of the courtroom to affect elections, and nobody has been extra necessary to that trigger than Elias, who retains an indication behind his desk that warns: “BEWARE OF ATTACK DEMOCRAT.”
To many Democrats, he’s a hero. The headline of a 2022 profile of Elias within the New Yorker referred to as Elias, “The First Protection Towards Trump’s Assault on Democracy.”
Conservatives are likely to see Elias in a a lot completely different gentle. “Mr. Elias is a part of a large and well-funded partisan leftist operation infamous for utilizing lawfare to undermine election integrity,” says Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “Making it simpler to steal elections is the antithesis of ‘democracy.’”
However, within the increasing world of lawfare, Elias, a 55-year-old graduate of Duke College’s regulation college, continues to face aside. Whereas scoring many victories within the courthouse, he has additionally labored carefully with campaigns on partisan efforts which have little to do with jurisprudence.
Extra Than a Courtroom Partisan
As common counsel to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign, he helped lead the trouble to fabricate and leak spurious “opposition analysis” claiming to disclose illicit ties between Trump and Russia.
Elias later testified that he was frightened – then as now – that Trump was a menace to democracy: “I obtained info that was troubling as somebody who cares about democracy.” That “info” turned out to be a fictitious “file” linking Trump to the Kremlin crafted by former British spook and FBI informant Christopher Steele, who huddled with Elias in his Washington workplace.
“A number of the info that was in it I believe has truly proved true. It was correct and necessary,” Elias testified in a closed-door listening to on Capitol Hill in December 2017, in keeping with a declassified transcript. Truly, Steele’s allegations proved to be a group of inconceivable rumors and fabricated allegations invented by Steele’s high researcher and a Clinton marketing campaign adviser.
Nonetheless, the disinformation was fed to the FBI and media, igniting prison investigations (together with unlawful digital surveillance), congressional probes, and a media frenzy that crippled Trump’s presidency with dangerous press for years.
In a parallel operation towards Trump, Elias labored together with his then-law associate Michael Sussmann and Clinton marketing campaign officers – together with Jake Sullivan, who’s now President Biden’s nationwide safety adviser – to develop deceptive proof of a “secret hotline” between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that allegedly used a “again channel” connection between e mail servers at Trump Tower and Russian-owned Alfa Financial institution. These false allegations have been posted on social media and delivered to the eye of the FBI, triggering a separate prison investigation concentrating on Trump and his marketing campaign. Like different Russiagate probes, it was finally discredited.
However the injury was performed. By spreading faux Russian dust on Trump, Elias was in a position to create scandals that dogged Trump for years, tarnishing his electability. The Democratic lawyer’s machinations, nevertheless, drew scrutiny from different investigators and harm his personal status – albeit quickly.
Throughout his probe of Russiagate, Particular Counsel John Durham discovered Elias deliberately sought to hide Clinton’s position within the file. In response to courtroom information, Elias acted as a cutout for greater than $1 million in marketing campaign funds for the file. By laundering its funds by way of a regulation agency, the Clinton marketing campaign and Elias have been in a position to declare attorney-client confidentiality when Durham sought their inner emails (the assertion of that privilege additionally blocked investigators from accessing communications between Elias and Steele’s instant employer, the Washington-based opposition analysis agency, FusionGPS). However their shell recreation obtained the Clinton marketing campaign in hassle with the Federal Election Fee, which later fined it and the Democratic Nationwide Committee $113,000 for misreporting the aim of the funds as “authorized bills,” somewhat than opposition analysis, in violation of FEC legal guidelines.
The Durham probe, which Elias insists was “politically motivated,” nonetheless raised moral points with the D.C. Bar and Elias’ former regulation agency, Perkins Coie, reportedly resulting in their breakup in August 2021, when Elias all of the sudden left the powerhouse after virtually 30 years. The agency, which Elias had joined contemporary out of regulation college in 1993, grew “more and more uncomfortable” with the undesirable scrutiny the Durham probe invited on it, in keeping with printed studies. The veteran prosecutor uncovered questionable billing practices by the agency. Durham additionally revealed the Democratic agency had arrange an FBI workspace inside its Washington workplaces, additional calling into query the FBI’s impartiality in investigating Trump.
In late 2021, Elias opened his personal agency, the Elias Regulation Group, however quickly misplaced main shoppers who reportedly grew weary of his aggressive techniques and go-it-alone fashion. Final yr, the DNC severed its 15-year relationship with Elias; then extra not too long ago, the Biden marketing campaign parted firm with him. In 2020, Elias had quarterbacked Biden’s authorized workforce that fought Trump’s claims in courtroom that the election had been stolen. He additionally beat again GOP measures to make sure election integrity after Democrats took benefit of the COVID-19 pandemic to dramatically loosen guidelines for voting – together with permitting poll harvesting, drop containers, and ballots arriving as much as 4 days after Election Day to nonetheless be counted.
Prime Democratic Celebration officers have been mentioned to bitter on Elias after he filed election-related lawsuits with out consulting with them, a few of which backfired with unfavorable – and lasting – rulings. Biden’s workforce reportedly additionally grew to become annoyed together with his charges. Elias billed the DNC and Biden marketing campaign greater than $20 million in the course of the 2020 election cycle.
However Elias has since taken on different shoppers – together with Kamala Harris – who’ve greater than made up for the loss in income. To date on this election cycle, the most recent FEC filings present the Elias Regulation Group has obtained a complete of greater than $22 million in disbursements from a bunch of main Democratic and anti-Trump shoppers. Along with the Harris For President marketing campaign, the place he’s in control of recounts and post-election litigation (it’s not recognized if he additionally has a hand in opposition analysis, as he did in 2016), Elias has signed retainer agreements with the:
- Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee
- Democratic Senatorial Marketing campaign Committee
- [Democratic] Senate Majority PAC
- Cease Trump PAC
- The Lincoln Undertaking
Elias has additionally been retained by Thoughts The Hole, a political motion committee set as much as assist Democrats take again the Home. Thoughts The Hole was based by Barbara Fried, the mom of convicted crypto kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried. In a lawsuit filed final yr, Fried, a Stanford regulation professor, is accused of orchestrating a probably unlawful scheme to funnel political contributions from her son to her PAC.
Amongst Elias’ different shoppers are Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, a frontrunner of Home efforts to question Trump who, information present, is shelling out a six-figure retainer for Elias as he runs for an open U.S. Senate seat in California, and Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman, who beforehand served as Schiff’s chief counsel in the course of the first Trump impeachment.
Elias additionally represents Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who polls present is narrowly main GOP challenger Bernie Moreno in his race for reelection, in keeping with the RealClearPolitics Common. That race might decide management of the Senate.
The enterprise of political lawfare – or “defending democracy,” as Elias calls his job – has made the tremendous lawyer super-rich. The latest property information present Elias lives in a $2.6 million mansion in Nice Falls, Va., and FEC information present he has the wherewithal to donate beneficiant sums to his occasion, together with a mixed complete of not less than $65,000 in items to the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Marketing campaign Committee.
“Aggressive Bully”
Elias first earned his status as a fierce and efficient advocate in 2009, when he received an eight-month recount battle to get his shopper, Al Franken, elected to the Senate. He additionally scored a sequence of victories towards the Trump marketing campaign in 2020.
“My workforce and I beat [Trump] in courtroom 60-plus occasions,” Elias boasted on X final month, in his trademark brashness. “Right here is my message to the GOP: Should you attempt to subvert the election in 2024, you may be sued and you’ll lose.”
Representing Biden electors in Arizona, for instance, Elias in late 2020 defeated a post-election Trump lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Maricopa County by arguing at trial the plaintiff confirmed the courtroom solely “backyard selection errors” however supplied “no proof about misconduct, no proof about fraud, no proof about unlawful votes.”
However Elias’ aggressive posture has additionally backfired.
In 2016, he sued Arizona to strike down two legal guidelines that, he argued, made it more durable for blacks and Hispanics to vote. One banned the apply of partisans going door-to-door and accumulating mail-in ballots and bringing them to a polling place, and the opposite canceled ballots that have been solid on the improper precinct. Elias argued the measures violated a key a part of the Voting Rights Act – Part 2 – prohibiting states from passing voting legal guidelines that discriminate based mostly on race. After a decrease courtroom in Arizona refused to dam the measures previous to the election, Elias appealed and received a positive ruling from the liberal U.S. Ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals. However within the case, Brnovich v. DNC, the U.S. Supreme Court docket sided with Arizona, ruling that the state’s ballot-integrity measures lacked discriminatory intent.
UCLA regulation professor Rick Hasen speculates that the conservative Supreme Court docket used the Brnovich case as “a chance to weaken” Part 2, which Democratic voting-rights legal professionals have relied on as a software for civil rights enforcement. Whatever the justices’ motives, the Brnovich resolution does set up a precedent whereby voting guidelines leading to solely small disparities for voters of shade can now not be challenged. Some Democrats complain that Elias’ loss in Arizona opened the door for all purple states to impose “restrictions” on voting.
“Marc didn’t take heed to such criticism and he introduced a particularly weak Voting Rights Act case in Arizona to disastrous outcomes,” Hasen wrote in a latest weblog. “It’s high quality to be zealous in a single’s advocacy,” he added, “however one needn’t be an aggressive bully.”
Elias has additionally aggravated judges. He’s been disciplined for submitting frivolous lawsuits and motions. In 2021, for example, the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sanctioned Elias for refiling a movement that was beforehand rejected by a decrease courtroom “with out disclosing the earlier denial.” The appellate courtroom ordered him to pay attorneys’ charges and courtroom prices incurred by opponents within the Texas election case over his “duplicative” movement.
“Utilizing lawfare as Elias does is authorized – except the litigation is frivolous,” mentioned Paul Kamenar, common counsel for the Nationwide Authorized and Coverage Middle in Washington.
Elias and an lawyer representing him didn’t reply to requests for remark. However in a earlier interview, he dismissed the criticism that he’s unnecessarily belligerent, arguing that the “existential menace Trump poses to democracy” calls for robust motion. He acknowledged that he might be brusque however defined he discarded lawyerly circumspection and restraint after Trump’s 2016 election “radicalized” him.
“And so I grew to become a way more polarized particular person and a extra polarizing lawyer,” Elias informed The New Yorker.
In a latest column for his Democracy Docket web site, Elias attacked Trump as one other “Hitler” who’s “plotting to overthrow American democracy.” He even warned {that a} reelected Trump “is sort of sure to transform the army into his private home police power” and “seize voting machines [and] management poll counting,” although state legal guidelines govern elections.
Nonetheless, he denies submitting groundless grievances over voting guidelines. He insists most of the tighter guidelines imposed by Republicans serve no professional goal. And he doesn’t purchase their argument that they’re wanted to cease fraudulent voting as a result of, as he claims, voter fraud is uncommon (or, extra exactly, hardly ever prosecuted).
Anti-Trump Battle Room
“Republicans are working day-after-day to make it more durable to vote,” Elias not too long ago posted on X. “They’re additionally planning to subvert the elections once they lose.”
Noting the GOP’s flurry of preelection lawsuits, together with within the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and North Carolina, Elias not too long ago informed MSNBC that Republicans will do something to push Trump excessive as a result of he can not win on his personal. “He’s set to lose to Kamala Harris,” Elias claimed, “and Republicans know that their solely method of successful this election is by intimidating voters, making it onerous for voters to take part within the course of, and by establishing a construction after the election for them to have the ability to have interaction within the sort of frivolous and harassing litigation and in the end the sort of techniques we noticed in 2020 – however on a a lot wider scale.”
To fight this, “My regulation agency is litigating 66 voting and election lawsuits in 23 states,” he mentioned on X, with most of them concentrated in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. “And we’re successful!” By comparability, Elias filed 20 voting-related lawsuits in 14 states at this level within the 2020 election cycle, making him greater than thrice as litigious this time.
His anti-Trump authorized battle room features a for-profit operation he based in 2020 referred to as Democracy Docket LLC, which employs 16 and is housed in the identical workplace as his regulation agency, information present. The digital platform tracks a number of hundred voting-related circumstances and publishes a weekly organ distributed to greater than 225,000 paid subscribers (at $120 a yr), who embrace legal professionals, politicians, and journalists.
A sister operation, Democracy Docket Authorized Fund, helps election litigation to guard the voting rights of primarily minority voters. One other spinoff, the Democracy Docket Motion Fund, raises cash for voting rights lawsuits. In response to the Capital Analysis Middle, the 2 organizations are bankrolled by thousands and thousands of {dollars} in so-called darkish cash, together with from leftwing billionaire George Soros – whom Elias has referred to as “a hero.” Via these autos, Elias has nearly “limitless funding” to problem any voting regulation in any state if he thinks it can assist his occasion and his Democratic shoppers win elections, in keeping with Individuals for Public Belief, a authorities watchdog group based mostly in Alexandria, Va.
Whereas Elias publicly claims he’s “defending free and honest elections,” it’s clear from his actions behind the scenes that his motives are purely partisan, critics say. Final month, he despatched a letter to Virginia state election officers threatening to sue them in the event that they don’t take away Cornel West, the presidential nominee of the leftwing Justice for All Celebration, from the state poll. Elias can also be attempting to maintain West, a progressive black faculty professor, off the poll in 15 different states, together with key battlegrounds. These efforts clearly don’t have anything to do with voting rights. Elias is just frightened West will bleed off sufficient votes from his Democratic shopper Kamala Harris to price her victories in states the place she is main by razor-thin margins towards Trump.
In a column he wrote final yr for Democracy Docket, Elias admitted: “A vote for No Labels, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West or every other third-party candidate is successfully a vote for Trump.”
As well as, Elias is quietly working with immigrant advocacy teams that wish to make it attainable for noncitizens to vote. In August, for instance, Elias stepped in to characterize El Pueblo in its quest to cease North Carolina’s State Board of Elections from eradicating noncitizens from voter registration rolls as required by a 2023 regulation. An estimated 325,000 “unauthorized” immigrants reside within the state.
As greater than a dozen jurisdictions run by Democrats now permit noncitizens to vote in some native elections, the push to redefine who’s eligible for the franchise guarantees to grow to be an ever stronger and divisive difficulty in American politics. A lot of this debate will virtually actually be hashed out within the courtroom battles and behind-the-scenes political maneuvering which might be Marc Elias’ particular apply.
After this text was printed, Marc Elias’s consultant mentioned a donation Elias had made to the nonprofit Simply Neighbors was not in assist of unlawful immigrants. He mentioned it was to assist victims of a snowstorm in Vermont.
NEW: Trump’s Hardest Foe May Be Harris Lawyer Marc Eliashttps://t.co/Ku7bB2dqkl
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) October 12, 2024
This RealClearInvestigations article was republished by The Gateway Pundit with permission.
Paul Sperry is the previous D.C. bureau chief for Investor’s Enterprise Each day, Hoover Establishment media fellow, writer of a number of books, together with bestseller INFILTRATION