Republican attorneys in Arizona are receiving targeted online threats warning them to think twice before considering a challenge of the 2024 General Election.
The threats are part of a progressive dark money organization’s ad campaign designed to prevent legal consequences for any botched elections that might occur in 2024 swing states.
According to Influencewatch.org, “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.”
“Don’t let partisan politics endanger your standing with the bar. The State Bar of Georgia is investigating two lawyers who participated in the fake elector plot. Don’t risk your law license by joining an effort to subvert democracy,” warns The Project 65 in an ad featuring an ominous veiled threat. “We – and the public – are watching.”
“Don’t lose your law license because of Trump,” warns another.
Attorneys say the ads are popping up nearly every day, leaving them concerned about the justice system itself.
“If lawyers can be threatened like this our system will fail,” said one attorney who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. “Not only our justice system, but what is to be done for voters who are harmed in the future by failures of our voting system in the past.”
Influencewatch.org reports:
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. Law Works 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.”
The name “65 Project” refers to the number of lawsuits filed by supporters of President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The 65 Project was launched to punish lawyers who supported President Trump and to dissuade future attempts to overturn elections on illegitimate grounds.
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.
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 New York Times reported that The 65 Project is airing ads in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all battleground states.
Axios reports The 65 Project is planning to spend $2.5 million on its campaign.
Of course, due to the fact that The 65 Project is highly partisan, despite its claims of bipartisanship, the $2.5 million is not being used to not “target any Democratic-aligned attorneys who have challenged election laws or results in the past and is advised exclusively by Democrats and Democratic allies.”
Many on the left insist that Democrats have not challenged election laws or results in the past.
However, PolitiFact found former Congressman Lee Zeldin’s claim that there have been Democratic objections to counting a state’s electors in the House of Representatives every time a Republican was elected president, to be “mostly true.”
“Do you know that every Jan. 6, every four years, whenever any Republican has been elected president over the course of the last few decades, same date, same time, same place, we have had Democrats on the floor of the House of Representatives, objecting and debating?” Zeldin said Sept. 6. “All sorts of different objections, that’s been our process.”
“Attempts to object to election results have been made in some fashion by House Democrats in 2001, 2005, and 2017, following the successful campaigns of George W. Bush and Trump, both Republicans,” found PolitiFact. “One senator supported the objection in 2005, though the Senate and the House ultimately did not uphold that objection.”
In early October, the Trump Campaign, Republican National Committee, and Arizona GOP launched a new Election Integrity team led by Harmeet Dhillon in Arizona. The AZGOP says it hopes the Election Integrity program will stop Democrat interference and secure Arizona’s elections.
“We are proud to announce President Trump’s appointment of Harmeet Dhillon as our new legal counsel in Arizona” said Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita and RNC Chairman Michael Whatley and Co-Chair Lara Trump in a joint statement. “She will spearhead critical legal battles, stop the many attacks on the integrity of our elections, and lead our winning election integrity team to Protect the Vote. Election Integrity is the top priority for President Trump, his campaign, and the RNC, and with a fair and secure election Arizona will send President Trump back to the White House. Harmeet is an unmatched force for Election Integrity and will lead the fight, and win, to secure Arizona’s elections – for our country’s most important election.”
Republicans say Dhillon will surely need the help of the Arizona attorneys currently being targeted by The 65 Project.
“I hope these able attorneys will not be intimidated by these despicable tactics,” said one candidate for a county-level office. “
