New group aims to disbar attorneys who aided Trump 2020 election lawsuits

A new dark money group with ties to Democrats known as the 65 Project is attempting to disbar more than 100 lawyers who worked on former President Donald Trump‘s post-election lawsuits.

The 65 Project describes itself as “a bipartisan effort to protect democracy from abuse of the legal system by holding accountable lawyers who engage in fraudulent and malicious lawsuits,” according to its website, which said it was given its name after an “army of Big Lie Lawyers filed 65 lawsuits based on lies to overturn the election.”

The group has already filed 10 ethics complaints against lawyers who are or have previously worked for Trump, including attorney Jenna Ellis, one of the most prominent faces of post-Election Day 2020 legal efforts to reverse President Joe Biden’s win. The complaint mentioning Ellis lists several other attorneys she worked alongside, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell, who recently received a complaint from a standing committee of the State Bar of Texas over her election-related challenges in Michigan.

TEXAS STATE BAR WANTS TO DISCIPLINE FORMER TRUMP ELECTION LAWYER SIDNEY POWELL

Nine other attorneys are already facing complaints from the 65 Project for either representing the former president or supporting his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Other complaints surround Georgia lawyer William Calhoun, who said he was proud of his involvement at the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and was denied bail after a judge determined he was a threat to the community.

The entirety of the project aims to spend millions of dollars to target 111 lawyers from 26 states, looking into attorneys from large national firms and some within smaller firms.

“I think the littler fish are probably more vulnerable to what we’re doing,” said David Brock, who is advising the 65 Project. “You’re threatening their livelihood. And, you know, they’ve got reputations in their local communities.”

Brock, the founder of Media Matters for America and the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, told Axios that the project’s primary goal was to thwart any conservative-leaning attorneys from taking on future challenges to overturn elections.

The group also began airing ads this week in battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — where Trump lost but was highly contested by his legal counsel during post-election challenges.

Some prominent figures have already sought to criticize the 65 Project, including Alan Dershowitz, who teamed up with a Texas attorney in October to file a complaint against Dominion Voting Systems on behalf of Michigan poll challengers. Dershowitz has not been named as a target by the group.

“We’ve seen this before, but this is the first time we’ve seen it from the Left. … I understand their motivations, they even in some ways be well intentioned, but what they’re doing is so dangerous,” Dershowitz said in a video on his Rumble channel, adding that “it simply says to lawyers: ‘We’re going to judge you by your clients.'”

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Other notable figures involved in the project’s advisory board include former Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham and Roberta Ramo, who was the American Bar Association’s first female president.

The Washington Examiner contacted representatives for the 65 Project but did not receive a response.