(LifeSiteNews) — What one congressman described as “a far-left activist group of lawyers” is running ads in election swing states aimed at intimidating attorneys from representing former President Donald Trump in any election challenges.
Suggesting an apparent foreknowledge or expectation of another contested election, “The 65 Project” announced an initial six figure ad purchase to run in state bar journals warning attorneys, “Don’t lose your law license because of Trump,” among other slogans.
The September 23 statement says its digital ads are running “in AZ, GA, MI, PA, & WI” and brags that they have “filed 86 bar complaints to date” against lawyers connected to Donald Trump, and they are “reminding lawyers that we – and the public – will be watching them.”
One past target of the group, attorney Stefan Passantino, told Tucker Carlson in an interview last week that the 65 Project is proudly running the ads targeting attorneys who may potentially represent Trump. These ads are “threatening them, ‘do not represent Trump in any post-election challenge because we will come after your license.’ And that is clearly an effort to intimidate lawyers against defending anyone’s rights, clearly President Trump’s rights.”
George Soros and a group called the 65 project are actively running ads in the swing states. Threatening the lawyers of Donald Trump with license removal if they contest the election results. pic.twitter.com/ZWKNOQzwNr
— USA FREEDOM-MAGA (@FREEDOM_USA_1) November 4, 2024
Such intimidation efforts are “having the desired effect,” the political attorney told Carlson. “It’s very difficult now to get a lawyer who’s willing to do election integrity work for Republicans because you know you’re putting yourself in the crosshair of this institutional machine.”
“It is fundamental to this democracy that everyone have effective assistance of counsel,” Passantino continued. “Everyone has that right. It does not matter if you are a Guantanamo detainee or if you’re a Republican, you are entitled to counsel even if you might be out of favor with the establishment elite. And as Shakespeare said in Henry VI, ‘If you want to destroy a society, the first thing you do is kill all the lawyers.’ Well, that’s what’s happening now.”
In the full interview, Passantino relates a harrowing story of how he was subjected to what he considered a politically motivated campaign to discredit his professional and personal integrity due to his having served as Deputy White House Counsel under President Trump for two years.
This aggressive campaign came upon him later as he represented junior Trump staffers who were being targeted by the House January 6 Committee and involved alleged ethics violations by Rep. Liz Cheney in collaboration with CNN, The New York Times and “The 65 Project.”
Though he was cleared of all these complaints, the damage to his professional and even personal reputation was in his words, “incalculable.”
In addition to suing the federal government for damages related to these matters, Passantino also had the new America First Legal organization come to his defense, filing a complaint against “The 65 Project” director Michael Teter in the Utah State Bar “for abusing the attorney grievance process to target and intimidate lawyers affiliated with President Trump.”
The “six figure” ads placed by the organization oddly appear to presume that today’s election will not only be contested but will be reportedly decided in favor of the Kamala Harris campaign. Additionally, it is clear “The 65 Project” wants to do everything plausible in advance to impede any competent scrutiny of the expected election results.
Majorities of likely voters believe elections in 2022 and 2020 were stolen
Heading into the 2020 election, visual facts on the ground indicated an easy Trump victory in contrast to the predictions of pollsters who attempted to project quite a different picture, with some claiming to expect a Biden “landslide.”
With these two very different pictures predicting large margins of victory in each direction, a wholly different outcome occurred with a highly controversial election that was contested in the courts and state legislatures across the nation.
Yet this is also what the Biden campaign, along with certain media outlets, and Big Tech corporations signaled to expect, and prepare for, as election day approached. Such preparations suggested a foreknowledge of high degrees of election fraud that with even a full media commitment to suppress its evidence would still be widely recognized by the public.
Soon after the election, a full 30 percent of even Democrats judged it was likely members of their own party “stole votes or destroyed pro-Trump ballots in several states to ensure that Biden would win,” with 20 percent saying “very likely.” Of Republicans, 75 percent agreed it was likely (61 percent “very likely”) equating to 47 percent of all likely voters believing the election was stolen, with 36 percent having a high degree of certainty.
And these numbers only grew in the years after with a March 2022 Rasmussen survey finding that a majority of likely American voters said it was likely “cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” with 33 percent saying it was very likely.
This trend of skepticism has continued to rise with yet another Rasmussen poll in April 2023 that 60 percent of likely U.S. voters believed it was likely the outcomes of some races in the 2022 midterm elections were affected by cheating, with 37 percent saying very likely.
While commenting during a live-streamed event with Tucker Carlson last Thursday, Trump emphasized how he “did much better” in the 2020 election than in 2016, including “millions and millions more votes … which rarely happens to a president.” But “bad, bad things happened” that brought about Joe Biden being awarded the presidency.
With regard to Trump’s prospects of winning today, he said, “If we can keep that cheating down, we’re going to have a tremendous victory. I think it’ll go down as one of the greatest victories of all time.”