By Luc Cohen
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - After Donald Trump's bid to overturn his 2020 election loss, an advocacy group was launched to take on the lawyers who aided in his doomed effort, hitting them with more than 80 ethics complaints.
With Trump again the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency, his allies have fired back at this group, named the 65 Project. A pro-Trump nonprofit known as America First Legal has accused the 65 Project of engaging in a left-wing attempt to intimidate conservative lawyers, filing a bar complaint earlier this week against the 65 Project's top lawyer Michael Teter. The Oct. 28 complaint said Teter was targeting lawyers "based solely upon their representation of a disfavored client."
Teter said America First Legal's move shows "the fear among those who would like to use the courts to subvert democracy." A representative of the body that weighs lawyer misconduct allegations in Utah, where Teter is licensed, declined to comment on the complaint against Teter.
The dueling misconduct allegations underscore the critical role lawyers are once again playing as another close election looms. Some of the lawyers involved in Trump's unsuccessful 2020 bid to remain in power, which was premised on false claims of widespread fraud, have lost their licenses or been indicted.
Trump has said he cannot possibly lose this time around unless Democrats cheat. This raises the prospect he would contest the results if Vice President Kamala Harris were declared the winner after the Nov. 5 election.
The 65 Project, named for the number of unsuccessful lawsuits it says were filed to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden's win, says its mission is to deter lawyers from bringing false election claims. In September, the group pledged to spend at least $100,000 on advertisements in legal journals in battleground states warning lawyers not to risk losing their law license by helping Trump.
America First Legal, a nonprofit founded in 2021 by former Trump White House aide Stephen Miller, harshly criticized the ads on its website in announcing its complaint against Teter. The group has increasingly focused on the election this year after previously bringing suits challenging diversity and migration policies.
"Seeking the personal destruction and financial ruin of another lawyer – simply because of the client he represented or the cause he took up – runs counter to... the letter and spirit of the law governing the activities of lawyers," America First Legal's executive director Gene Hamilton said in a statement announcing the complaint against Teter. A spokesperson for the group did not respond to requests from Reuters for further comment.
Among America First Legal's election-related activities this year was to file a lawsuit in August seeking to force counties in battleground state Arizona to investigate about 44,000 voters - about 1% of the statewide total - who were allowed to register without providing proof of citizenship. A judge on Oct. 11 declined to rule in America First Legal's favor before the election, which the group is appealing.
DISCIPLINE AND DISMISSALS
Of the lawyers targeted by the 65 Project between 2022 and 2023, at least four have faced discipline, state bar and court records show. At least three complaints have been dismissed by disciplinary boards in Georgia and Pennsylvania, Teter said.
A spokesperson for the State Bar of Georgia confirmed that it had dismissed two of the complaints after investigation. Pennsylvania's Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At least 12 lawyers against whom the 65 Project filed complaints have not faced discipline and are involved again in voting-related litigation on behalf of Trump allies, according to a Reuters review of the group's website and court records.
"It's disappointing that the bar associations are taking as long as they are to review and investigate and complete these matters, but I don't see it as a setback to our work," Teter said.
America First Legal received $44.4 million in contributions in 2022, the most recent year for which its tax returns are publicly available. The 65 Project's annual budgets are not publicly available.
Neither America First Legal nor the 65 Project disclose their funding sources. Teter said the 65 Project's funding comes from "individuals and organizations that are interested in ensuring that the legal system is not used and abused to subvert democracy."
'PHANTOM FEARS OF FOREIGN MALFEASANCE'
In the lead-up to Tuesday's election, Trump and his allies have flooded courts across the country with lawsuits seeking to change rules and purge voter rolls in what they say is an effort to make sure ballots are counted properly and people don't vote illegally.
Overall, the legal blitz is faltering: in the past three weeks, Trump's allies have been dealt at least 11 court losses in battleground states, court records show.
But they have scored a handful of victories as well. On Wednesday, a Pennsylvania judge extended the deadline for some voters to request a mail-in ballot after Trump's campaign alleged some voters seeking ballots were improperly turned away.
And the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated Virginia's purge of about 1,600 people from its voter rolls who Republican state officials concluded were not American citizens, even though President Joe Biden's administration said actual citizens were among those struck. Virginia voters often lean Democratic, though the state's current governor and attorney general are Republicans.
Among the Republican setbacks is a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania federal court on behalf of six Republican congressmen by lawyer Erick Kaardal, who in 2020 sued to try to block certification of Biden's victory, drawing a federal judge's referral to an ethics committee and a 65 Project complaint.
Kaardal's lawsuit this year sought to change the battleground state's procedures for verifying overseas voters, which Kaardal argued were vulnerable to fraud.
He argued on Oct. 18 before a skeptical judge in a Harrisburg courtroom that Iranians could submit fraudulent overseas ballots unless rules were tightened. Just over a week later, U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner dismissed the case, ruling that the plaintiffs "cannot rely on phantom fears of foreign malfeasance to excuse their lack of diligence."
Asked to comment on the dismissal, Kaardal provided Reuters with a statement from the Election Research Institute - a conservative nonprofit whose lawyer Karen DiSalvo handled the case alongside him - saying the plaintiffs were considering an appeal, which DiSalvo confirmed.
A JUDGE'S REFERRAL
Kaardal's recent court defeat comes four years after he filed a challenge to Congress' certification of Biden's win, a lawsuit that the presiding judge found to be "filled with baseless fraud allegations and tenuous legal claims." He referred Kaardal to the Washington D.C. board that weighs professional misconduct allegations, without making a recommendation as to whether he should be disciplined.
The Washington disciplinary committee declined to take action, according to a Dec. 28, 2023 letter Kaardal provided to Reuters.
The 65 Project also filed an ethics complaint against Kaardal in his home state of Minnesota over the 2020 lawsuit and three similar ones.
The director of the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, which investigates complaints against attorneys in the state, declined to provide information on the complaint.
Kaardal, who has twice argued successfully at the U.S. Supreme Court over election issues, denied violating any professional rules in any of his cases. "Over an approximately 32 year career, there have been no disciplinary complaints against me," Kaardal said in an Oct. 24 email to Reuters, which found no evidence to the contrary.
'ATTEMPT TO INTIMIDATE'
In addition to Kaardal, other lawyers against whom the 65 Project has filed complaints include lawyer Kenneth Klukowski, whom the group said violated legal ethics rules in 2020 when he allegedly helped former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark try to block the certification of Biden's win in several states.
The D.C. Bar did not respond to a request for comment about the status of the complaint about Klukowski. A Washington legal panel in August recommended that Clark's law license be suspended for two years. Clark has denied violating attorney ethics rules.
Ahead of the upcoming election, Klukowski is back in the game, representing the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute in a challenge to a 2021 Biden executive order intended to increase voter participation. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Another lawyer, William Bradley Carver, has represented the Republican National Committee in election-related cases in 2024, after drawing a complaint from the 65 Project for being sworn in as an elector for Trump in Georgia even though Biden won the Southern state in 2020.
The State Bar of Georgia informed Teter and Carver on Dec. 27, 2022 that it had dismissed the grievance in part because Carver was acting in his personal capacity and not as a lawyer when he was sworn in as an elector, according to a letter Carver provided to Reuters.
A spokesperson for the Bar confirmed the complaint was dismissed.
In an Oct. 31 email, Carver told Reuters that Teter's "attack on me was purely an attempt to intimidate me and to discourage younger lawyers from being willing to represent the Republican party. That's dangerous."
Teter described the 65 Project's board of advisors as bipartisan, noting that it includes former lawyers in Republican administrations.
"Politics isn't entering into it," Teter said in an Oct. 31 telephone interview. "The abuse of our legal system is what the premise of our work is."