The Dark Money Intimidation Group Attacking Election Lawyers

The 65 Project is David Brock’s Stasi-like attack dog for smearing, disbarring, bankrupting, and jailing anyone who challenges the corrupt 2020 election

Originally published at TomKlingenstein.com (Aug. 16, 2024)

Editor’s Note: Lawfare is one of the most important ways in which the cold civil war is carried out. By turning the American legal system against both its intended ends and its own citizens, the group quota regime simultaneously gains power over the levers of government and undermines the constitutional foundations of the American regime.

If we are to combat this effort, we must understand where it comes from and how it is prosecuted. Investigative journalist Hayden Ludwig looks into the organization at the heart of the ongoing lawfare and finds not a “nonpartisan” effort to assert the rule of law, but a mercenary arm of the Democrat machine.

Amid last-minute rule changes, widely reported ballot irregularities, and an unprecedented movement away from secure, in-person voting, the 2020 election that installed Joe Biden became one of the most hotly contested in American history.

Given this uncertainty, Donald Trump and his allies, including a number of highly qualified attorneys, raised their concerns in the avenue provided by the Constitution: our court system. For this, Trump’s lawyers have been smeared relentlessly in the media, dragged through costly and damaging professional reviews, and bullied into silence or retreat.

That persecution did not happen organically. The intimidation campaign against Trump’s lawyers, and against any who dissented from the approved narrative, was a highly coordinated effort directed from the very center of the Democratic machine.

And the cabal at the heart of this war on blind justice is The 65 Project — named for the number of lawsuits filed by concerned citizens after the 2020 election — driven by David Brock, the consigliere of the professional left. Brock began his career as a conservative hero who exposed the Democrats’ smear campaign against future Justice Clarence Thomas as well as Bill Clinton’s “Troopergate” sex scandal — only to turncoat by becoming an accomplice of Hillary Clinton and disavowing his former career as a “right-wing hit man.”

For his betrayal, Brock was handsomely rewarded by Clinton allies, who helped him architect a constellation of far-left attack groups known as the “Brocktopus”, most notably Media Matters for America and American Bridge 21st Century, both of which are closely connected with the 65 Project today.

The partisan bias is obvious. Media Matters is the chief attack dog of the Democratic Party, which smears mainstream Republicans as bigoted racists with funding from George Soros, the Tides Foundation, and the National Education Association. It’s currently facing a defamation lawsuit from Elon Musk’s X which alleges the hit group manufactured a report showing advertiser posts next to neo-Nazi posts to drive away major advertisers such as Disney and Apple from the platform. Missouri has joined in with a separate lawsuit accusing Media Matters of fraudulent business practices for fundraising off its anti-X campaign.

American Bridge is the left’s “gaffe database” created to track and record every word spoken by Republican politicians in the hopes of digging up a juicy line to blast over the airwaves. Its most infamous victim was Todd Akin, a former Missouri congressman and 2012 Senate candidate who used the infelicitous term “legitimate rape” during a radio interview — a flub that killed his political career. 

These are just two tentacles of the Brocktopus, which all share the uniform goal of defeating Republicans at any cost. For The 65 Project, only the tactics are different. Far from being a “bipartisan,” rule-of-law organization, as it claims, this is the newest cog in an intimidation machine designed to cement permanent Democratic control of Washington — and destroy anyone who gets in the way.

Brock launched The 65 Project in March 2022 with a plan to spend millions of dollars from dark-money donors to blacklist and disbar 111 lawyers across 26 states who either defended Trump in post-election litigation or challenged the 2020 election results in court. 

The project has 3 prongs: Run political ads in battleground states to juice Democratic turnout ahead of the 2022 midterms, file bar complaints, and lobby the American Bar Association to forbid “fraudulent and malicious lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results.” Brock himself bragged that the objective was “threatening their livelihood … and reputations in their local communities” to “make them toxic.” 

Beneath the “Rule of Law” Camouflage

To date, The 65 Project has filed bar complaints against 73 attorneys — with another 40 in its sights — and 3 Trump electors alleging everything from professional misconduct to attempting to “hunt down members of Congress and [Vice President Mike] Pence” as part of the Jan. 6, 2021 “insurrection.” If found guilty, each one is likely to have his law license suspended or revoked, jeopardizing his livelihood or ending his legal career outright. 

As a result, Stanley Woodard, the lawyer for Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, believes defending his client could cost him a seat on the bench. Similarly, The 65 Project’s complaint against John Eastman—who once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas—got him disbarred in D.C. and recommended disbarment in California for threatening “our democracy.” 

In reality, Eastman provided advice for the Trump campaign on the legality of rejecting electoral votes that had been certified despite violations of state election law—a far cry from fomenting insurrection to keep Trump in office. Recall that Democrats hurriedly passed the Electoral Reform Act of 2022 to permanently block future vice presidents from rejecting electoral vote certifications, after they said Vice President Mike Pence didn’t have that authority in the 2020 election. So was Eastman lying, as leftists allege, or too close to the truth for comfort?

The 65 Project accused three more men — William Carver, James Troupis, and Daryl Moody — of impersonating electors and submitting fraudulent electoral certificates. But these “fake” electors were anything but. In reality, they were contingent electors named during ongoing legal challenges to the electoral vote certifications in Georgia and Wisconsin. Had Trump won those legal battles, these contingent electors would’ve had their votes counted instead of Biden’s slate of electors. The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland details how that exact scenario played out in the 1960 election, when Democrats appointed contingent electors for the contested state of Hawaii, which they ultimately won after the judge-ordered a recount. That isn’t a crime; it’s democracy.

But The 65 Project’s grandstrategy, of course, is using fear to cut off all legal recourse for conservative victims of election fraud. Have they succeeded? Consider that few conservative election lawyers are brave enough to represent candidates like Kari Lake, who narrowly lost Arizona’s gubernatorial race in 2022 and whose lawsuits were tossed by partisan judges instead of given their day in court.

“I can tell you, I got calls from three lawyers over this past week who were asked to either represent Trump [or] Trump’s co-defendant,” constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz lamented last July, “and all three of them pointed to Project 65 [as] among the reasons why they wouldn’t consider taking the case.” The project has “taken a toll on lots of lawyers,” Dershowitz added, making it difficult for Trump to find lawyers in Florida to handle his defense.

In response, Dershowitz offered to defend any lawyers targeted by The 65 Project pro bono. “These are lawyers who ought to be themselves subject to bar association discipline,” Dershowitz said of The 65 Project’s operatives, pointing out that the campaign effectively guts any victim’s 6th Amendment right to “assistance of counsel for his defense.” 

Almost immediately, The 65 Project leveled a 38-page complaint against Dershowitz in December 2022, calling his work in Kari Lake’s election lawsuit exemplary of “the growing concern over lawyers attacking the rule of law and our democracy.” 

“Mr. Dershowitz chose to offer his professional license to an assault on our democracy,” Michael Teter, The 65 Project’s managing director, scorned. “He pursued litigation that lacked any basis in law or fact. He participated in an organized effort to sow discord and doubt about the 2022 elections.”

Still, Dershowitz isn’t taking it sitting down. This “is the worst abuse of the legal profession I’ve seen in 60 years of practicing law,” he said, “and this is one lawyer who’s fighting back.”

The D.C. Insiders Behind the Attacks

While The 65 Project is functionally part of the Brocktopus, it’s managed by a cabal of senior left-wing operatives. 

Melissa Moss — the project’s senior advisor — is a political consultant, ex-Clinton administration staffer, and former Democratic National Committee finance director. Moss is also on the board of David Brock’s Facts First USA, created in 2022 to attack Congress’s new “MAGA-Majority” and to “limit the reach of the right-wing rage machine… rather than allowing it to become part of the mainstream media coverage.” The group has defended Hunter Biden, calling the investigation into his dealings with Ukraine’s Burisma a “shameless inquisition”.

Michael Teter, The 65 Project’s managing director, is also an ex-Perkins Coie litigator and a veteran Democratic campaign staffer. Teter has apparently scrubbed from official biographies his tenure at RepresentUS, an election “reform” lobbying group funded by the Tides Foundation that pushed in an ad campaign that “America Needs to Vote at Home During COVID-19” as early as March 23, 2020 — just 8 days after the lockdowns began.

In 2023, Teter served as the attorney for Ray Epps, the notorious January 6 “rioter” seen on footage goading protesters into unlawfully entering the Capitol building. Instead of a prison sentence, Epps — against whom the FBI declined to press charges — ultimately got a year of probation with no jail time and zero travel restrictions.

Big Philanthropy Strikes Back

Structurally, The 65 Project is functionally two organizations: an LCC that shares office space with both Brock’s American Bridge PAC and a law firm on D.C.’s Maine Avenue, and a front for a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) “charity” called the Franklin Education Forum, a key Brocktopus arm.

As a for-profit, the LLC does not disclose its financial backers, thereby exchanging tax-exemption for near-total anonymity. This is a dark-money tactic that mega-donors such as Mark Zuckerberg and ex-Enron billionaire John Arnold employ to shield political spending from public scrutiny. 

We know that the LLC’s board consists of at least two veteran Democratic operatives, Ezra Reese and Teter. Reese is a former election lawyer for Perkins Coie — the Democratic Party’s law firm of choice — who currently leads political affairs at Marc Elias’s Elias Law Group, the mission of which is “electing Democrats, supporting voting rights, and helping progressives make change”. 

With over $1 million from the Clinton campaign, Perkins Coie helped develop the Christopher Steele dossier responsible for the 2016 Russia hoax, which peddled the lie that Trump is a Russian asset.

The 65 Project also functions as a front for the Franklin Education Forum, Brock’s shop for training “progressive messengers” and shuffling money around the Brocktopus. Media Matters, for instance, has routed at least $2 million through the forum for unknown causes, while the forum paid out over $2.3 million to American Bridge’s “charitable” arm in 2022. 

The Franklin Education Forum also paid $310,370 to Teter Legal LLC in 2022 for “managing consulting services.”

Brock chairs the forum’s board, which as of its latest filings consists of Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson; Rodell Mollineau, American Bridge’s co-founder; former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, RFK Jr.’s elder sister and founding chair of American Bridge’s board; and former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander. 

The forum’s president, John Neffinger, is a strategy consultant with Democracy Partners, which secretly organized mentally ill and homeless people to incite violence at 2016 Trump rallies. In 2017, the Democratic National Committee hired Neffinger to serve as its interim communications director, with DNC chair Donna Brazile calling him a “talented and dedicated Democrat” who is “training an entire generation of Democratic leaders.”

Most of the forum’s contributors are obscured by pass-through middlemen such as the Tides Foundation, Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, and Boston Foundation. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund gave the forum $250,000 earmarked for The 65 Project in 2022. 

Another contributor is the Dwoskin Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Democratic donor and strategist Al Dwoskin, who is most infamous for co-founding the Democracy Alliance, which coordinates the left’s election spending each year, and Catalist, the Democratic Party’s preferred campaign data vendor. 

This shadowy money web earned the Brocktopus a lawsuit for allegedly circumventing campaign finance rules to aid the Democratic Party.

In 2020, the conservative Patriots Foundation filed complaints with the IRS and the Federal Election Commission that accused the Franklin Education Forum of improperly funneling tax-deductible 501(c)(3) contributions to its partisan arm, “which cannot provide tax-deductibility to its donors,” illegally benefitting Democrats with media support that charities are barred from providing.

One such program provided talking points to blame Republicans for the 2014 government shutdown, writing:

Talk about trust issue: Republicans can’t even be trusted to pay the bills they’ve run up. . . . Republican leadership calls it ‘irresponsible’ to pay the bills they ran up without first threatening to tank our entire economy.

For weeks they’ve been planning to hold our government hostage but couldn’t agree on what to demand for ransom. Most recently, they wanted to demand we restore the very cuts they made just a few months ago.

Fortunately, Republicans don’t want to appear too radical too close to the 2014 elections so they seem to be backing off their threat to manufacture another crisis.

While they’re legally distinct groups, in reality there’s hardly any daylight separating Media Matters, American Bridge, and the Franklin Education Forum — and that’s the point. Brock himself admitted in 2015 that his tax-exempt organization — which is legally required to remain non-partisan — “defend[s] Hillary Clinton from the Republicans’ unfair attacks.” Every group in the Brocktopus works together to aid the left and help Democrats, directly or indirectly. That now including The 65 Project, regardless of its “nonpartisan” posturing.

Everywhere, America is suffering under tyrannical lawfare campaigns levied by professional ideologues and bankrolled by Big Philanthropy. Those efforts began with controversial figures like Trump’s attorneys, but they won’t end there. Bit-by-bit, the left is shrinking what’s considered acceptable or fringe until anyone can be labeled an extremist for questioning their rule, or an “insurrectionist” for exercising their rights under the U.S. Constitution.