Have You Heard About The “65 Project”?

Many thanks to a reader for bringing this to my attention.

Have you heard about the 65 Project?

I hadn’t and I don’t know how I missed it.

But it’s real and it’s very scary.

Because it completely obliterates the Constitution.

Not that the Democrats have cared much for the Constitution for decades at least, but this is outright blatant.

So basically, here’s the idea…

The 65 Project is a group attempting to threaten disbarment to any lawyer who would DARE to represent President Trump.

The right to legal counsel to mount a defense is guaranteed in the Constitution…

And how many times do we see murderers and rapists get attorneys because “they’re entitled to a defense”…..

But Trump?

Nope.

Can’t have it.

Can’t even let him have an attorney!

These people are sick.

Take a look:

Professor Alan Dershowitz told me today on my show that he's received many calls from lawyers saying they wouldn't dare defend President Trump because of threats from this group. How is this legal?

More info on the 65 Project here:https://t.co/NfYBK0Dxg8

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 13, 2023

Here’s a full breakdown on the group, from Influence Watch:

The 65 Project is a campaign targeting lawyers who aided attempts by then-President Donald Trump and his supporters to overturn the 2020 election results using advertisements, threats of disbarment, and changing rules within the American Bar Association, ostensibly to deter future similar efforts.

The 65 Project was “devised” by Democratic consultant and former Clinton administration official Melissa Moss. It is a project of Law Works, a group with no website or public financial disclosures. ¹ LawWorks has previously received grants from public policy-oriented foundation Democracy Fund and is a fiscal project of the Franklin Education Forum, a nonprofit organization that provides training and support to, “advance and broaden the appeal of the progressive cause.” ^{2 3}

The name “65 Project” refers to the number of lawsuits filed by supporters of President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election. ⁴

CONTENTS

• Mission
• Campaign
• Criticisms
• Leadership
• References

Mission

The 65 Project was launched to punish lawyers who supported President Trump and to dissuade future attempts to overturn elections on illegitimate grounds. ^{5 6}

According to the 65 Project, then-President Trump and a group of lawyers attempted to steal the 2020 presidential election by filing dozens of false lawsuits to disrupt the electoral process and permit Trump or his sympathizers to use their power to overturn the election results. The 65 Project refers to these lawyers as the “army of Big Lie Lawyers,” a reference to the concept of a lie so ostentatious that people doubt it could be credibly fabricated, a principle credited to Second World War-era Nazi propaganda. ⁷

Campaign

In March 2022, the 65 Project launched by filing ethics complaints against 10 lawyers who worked on lawsuits to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Trump. The group seeks to disbar 111 lawyers from 26 states in total. The targeted lawyers include President Trump’s legal advisors such as Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, lawyers who were purported “alternate electors” for Trump, and attorneys who allegedly supported the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol. ⁸

The group will air ads in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all battleground states. The 65 Project will also encourage the American Bar Association to codify rules banning frivolous attempts to overturn elections. ⁹

The 65 Project expressed plans to spend $2.5 million on its campaign in its first year. ¹⁰

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Criticisms

Though the 65 Project claims to be bipartisan, ¹¹ it is not targeting any Democratic-aligned attorneys who have challenged election laws or results in the past, and is advised exclusively by Democrats and Democratic allies. Texas attorney Paul Davis has described the project as “a desperate attempt by leftist hacks and mercenaries” and an effort “to neutralize anyone on the right with the ability to stand in the way of the left’s efforts to hide malfeasance in the 2020 elections and to clear the path for a repeat of similar malfeasance in the 2022 mid-terms.” ¹²

Leadership

Attorney Michael Teter is the managing director of the 65 Project. He was previously a general counsel for Represent.Us, a left-of-center campaign finance regulation advocacy group, and he was an assistant attorney general in Utah. From 2006-2008, Teter was a litigation associate with Perkins Coie, a law firm with close ties to the Democratic National Committee. He worked as the Wisconsin state field director for the presidential campaign of John Kerry (D-MA) and managed the Senatorial campaign of former Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI). Early in his career, Teter served as the deputy finance director of the California Democratic Party. ¹³

The 65 Project’s Senior Advisor is David Brock, the founder of Media Matters for America and American Bridge 21st Century. ¹⁴

David Fink was a former advisor to the 65 Project. Previously a lawyer based in Detroit, in 2022 he persuaded a judge to sanction nine lawyers involved in the “Kraken” lawsuit, including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood. David’s son, Nathan Fink, was a former advisor to 65 Project as well. ^{15 16}

The 65 Project’s advisory board includes former Department of Homeland Security official Paul Rosenzweig, former Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham, and former American Bar Association president Roberta Cooper Ramo. ¹⁷

Kirk is 100% correct here:

Have you heard of the 65 Project? The Unabomber, the Boston Bombers, murderers, and rapists all deserve a defense, but lawyers who represent President Trump, a constitutional right for all citizens, are threatened with disbarment — a professional death sentence.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 13, 2023

It’s pure evil (not to mention highly Unconstitutional):

Thanks @charliekirk11 for calling attention to the 65 Project.

It and a group named LDAD are carrying out lawfare against Trump lawyers.

I am a target of that campaign.

Here’s my piece on the evils of this tyranny and lawyer intimidation. https://t.co/blePfyL4sh https://t.co/GIGHeBmx1y

— Jeff Clark (@JeffClarkUS) June 14, 2023

Revolver News had more:

As Shakespeare famously wrote in Henry VI Part II: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Even for me as a lawyer, it’s hard not to sympathize with that sentiment. Lawyers are a drag. But in reflective moments, I’m more partial to Sir Thomas More’s line from Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons: “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s!”

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The evenhanded application of the law is a principle that must be defended. Everywhere, balance and perspective are under attack. Whatever the costs of America’s process-heavy adversarial contests, that feature of our polity is a key bulwark of liberty. Due process is not something to be trifled with, deconstructed, or thrown away based on the passions of the political moment.

Yet that is happening, right now. The Left has set the lines of battle: Any lawyers who worked for President Trump with verve and ingenuity, along with any lawyers he retained to mount his various 2020 election contests, must be crushed, must have their noses rubbed into the dirt, must if possible lose their jobs and even their right to practice law. It’s not right, just as it would not have been right to demonize the lawyers who mounted Al Gore’s challenges to the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

On the Left, the constant rallying cry is “Remember January 6!” It’s like a woke version of “Remember the Alamo!”, designed to divide and conquer instead of unite the nation in the spirit of apple-pie American patriotism. For those who know me, I’m a lot more partial to traditional patriotism than to false and cynical attempts by MSNBC and its ilk to use the aberration of January 6 as some kind of Rosetta Stone to American politics. As James O’Keefe has recently brought to light, even Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times secretly knows I’m right.

Project 65 and Its Despicable Aims
When the Left wants something, you can be sure that limitless streams of money will soon pour forth to fund their destructive crusade. Recently, Axios profiled something significant you might have missed: “Project 65,” a new initiative funded by millions in “dark money” to destroy as many Trump-affiliated lawyers as possible.

At the retail level, Project 65’s purpose is to file bar complaints against 111 lawyers wherever they are licensed. At the wholesale level, it seeks to amend state bar rules, so that no lawyers with a sense of self-preservation will ever again want to bring election-related contests on behalf of President Trump, or any other populist conservative candidate. According to Project 65, everyone secretly knows that elections in Atlanta, Chicago, or Philadelphia (my home town) are entirely aboveboard, so any legal challenges to them must be in bad faith. My Mom’s stories from decades of poll watching in Philadelphia must have been hallucinated, and a slew of election fraud cases in Philadelphia must have magically disappeared from the annals of the law. The Chicago corruption of Mayor Daley in the 1960 presidential election is an old wives’ tale. Election fraud in America simply doesn’t exist. Of course, some exceptions exist—for Democrat complaints of voter fraud, of course. Don’t expect Project 65 to file a bar complaint any time soon against losing candidate Stacey Abrams over her frequent claims to be the legitimate governor of Georgia.
Project 65 is led by David Brock, the founder of Media Matters for America and the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. Brock is still on his life-long quest to expiate his decades-old “sin” of writing The Real Anita Hill, a book attacking the credibility of Clarence Thomas’s harassment accuser. Brock will be joined by an advisory board that includes former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, Clinton affiliate Melissa Moss, and “Republican” Paul Rosenzweig.

(Here I pause to ask, Paul, what’s happened to you? We both served in the Bush 43 Administration, me at Justice and you at Homeland Security. President Trump actually achieved many of the goals President Bush advocated, yet rarely did much to accomplish. Talking a good game is not the same thing as running a good game. Best to judge by fruits and not by braggadocious tweets, I think. Never Trumpism seems to be a fever that makes calmly comparing records impossible.)

Here’s what Brock describes as the mission of his project: “[Project 65] will not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints but shame them and make them toxic in their communities.” According to Axios, Brock’s plan is nothing less than a war of the strong against the weak: “I think the littler fish are probably more vulnerable to what we’re doing… You’re threatening their livelihoods. And you know, they’ve got reputations in their local communities.”

Pure evil:

Imagine a former president hard pressed to find legal representation. Now picture that happening to you. Everyone is entitled to legal representation in this country! The 65 Project is funded by dark money. 🔥 https://t.co/ox6dGpHxH6

— Phoenix33 (@PhoenixFree33) June 17, 2023

If they can do it to Trump, they can and WILL do it to you!

Here’s more from RedState:

We previously reported on Harvard Law Professor Emeritus, Alan Dershowitz sharing his thoughts on the politically-motivated prosecution of former President Donald Trump in Miami.

Now Dershowitz, one of Trump’s attorneys during the first impeachment trial, is giving an insider view of what he says is intense pressure by one liberal group intent on keeping attorneys from working on Trump’s behalf.

In Thursday’s edition of his Substack newsletter, entitled “Why Donald Trump Cannot Get a Top-Tier Lawyer,” he lodges some damning accusations. After stating that the former president has been arraigned and pled not guilty to the classified documents charges, Dershowitz writes of Trump’s current legal team on that case:

….He was represented by two lawyers, neither of whom he apparently wants to lead his defense at trial. He has been interviewing Florida lawyers, and several top ones have declined. I know, because I have spoken to them. There are disturbing suggestions that among the reasons lawyers are declining the case is because they fear legal and career reprisals.

There is a nefarious group that calls itself The 65 Project that has as its goal to intimidate lawyers into not representing Trump or anyone associated with him. They have threatened to file bar charges against any such lawyers.

Dershowitz notes that this isn’t the first time he’s written about the group — an action that placed him on their “target” list, he says:

When these threats first emerged, I wrote an op-ed offering to defend pro bono any lawyers that The 65 Project goes after. So The 65 Project immediately went after me, and contrived a charge based on a case in which I was a constitutional consultant, but designed to send a message to potential Trump lawyers: if you defend Trump or anyone associated with him, we will target you and find something to charge you with. The lawyers to whom I spoke are fully aware of this threat — and they are taking it seriously.

He readily admits that “[t]here may be other reasons” why lawyers might choose not to work for Donald Trump, including the fact that he’s a challenging client to handle. But he says that isn’t enough to explain what he’s observing and hearing from others in the legal sphere. Another reason could be the nature of the case itself, which “….will be a difficult case to defend and an unpopular one with many in the legal profession and in general population.”

Dershowitz compares The 65 Project’s web of actions meant to hurt Trump’s ability to retain competent counsel to the Joseph McCarthy era:

This case is different: the threats to the lawyers are greater than at any time since McCarthyism. Nor is the comparison to McCarthyism a stretch. I recall during the 1950s how civil liberties lawyers, many of whom despised communism, were cancelled, and attacked if they dared to represent people accused of being communists. Even civil liberties organizations stayed away from such cases, for fear that it would affect their fundraising and general standing in the community.

He goes on to describe how he was “cancelled” after acting as an attorney during the impeachment trial:

It may even be worse today, as I can attest from my own personal experiences, having defended Trump against an unconstitutional impeachment in 2020. I was cancelled by my local library, community center and synagogue. Old friends refused to speak to me and threatened others who did. My wife, who disagreed with my decision to defend Trump, was also ostracized. There were physical threats to my safety.

The former law professor references what he calls “the John Adams standard” in the American legal system. Adams “too was attacked for defending the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre, but his representation of these accused killers now serves as a symbol of the 6th Amendment right to counsel.”

He continues, warning that The 65 Project’s “chilling” effect is putting that constitutional right in peril:

That symbol has now been endangered by The 65 Project and others who are participating in its McCarthyite chilling of lawyers who have been asked to represent Trump and those associated with him.