Dem Operative David Brock To Launch Attack On Republican Election Lawyers: “make them toxic in their communities and in their firms”
Goal: “not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.”… “You’re threatening their livelihood. And, you know, they’ve got reputations in their local communities.”
If you want to understand why our politics is so poisonous, a good place to start would be the career of David Brock, who has pursued the politics of personal destruction more relentlessly and over a longer period of time than just about anyone else.
We first covered Brock in 2011 when the organization he founded, Media Matters for America, declared war on Fox News, Media Matters Plans “Guerrilla Warfare and Sabotage” on Fox News And Conservative Websites:
If you had any doubt that Media Matters — which just received an infusion of money from George Soros — is the most dangerous and intolerant media group in the nation, this piece by Ben Smith at Politico will convince you.
Media Matters, which started as one of the usual-sort of “watchdog” groups (which exist on the left and right) has transformed itself recently into a group devoted towards sabotaging Fox News, Media Matters’ war against Fox:
The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel….
Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show….
That new hire in 2011 was Angelo Carusone, now Media Matter’s President, who pioneered attacking conservative media not by winning the argument, but by trying to drive away advertisers.
Brock also founded American Bridge, another oppo research outfit, as we covered in 2013, American Bridge to follow even more Republicans around in 2014 and 2016. You didn’t need to be a Republican to incur the wrath of Brock, just someone who opposed the Clintons, as Bernie Sanders found out, Bernie Sanders Meets the Clinton Smear Machine and He’s Furious.
And of course, Resistance to Trump was made for Brock, David Brock Offers Cash for Dirt on Trump.
The leftwing The Nation magazine had a 2017 article that pretty much summed it up, The Poisonous Politics of David Brock:
David Brock is the darling of Democratic Party millionaires and billionaires.
Donald Trump’s inauguration has sparked rallies in defense of Medicare and Medicaid, women’s marches across the country, protests against mass deportations and more. Brock, meanwhile, is using the occasion to convene over 100 deep-pocketed Democratic Party donors to a weekend retreat at Miami’s Turnberry Isle resort for a “Democracy Matters 17” conference. It will be three days of strategy sessions to bolster his multimillion-dollar nonprofit political machine.
Brock’s empire, including Media Matters, American Bridge, ShareBlue, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, served as a hit squad for the Clinton campaign last year….
During the Democratic primary, Brock declared that “black lives don’t matter to Bernie Sanders” and called on the septuagenarian Sanders to release his medical records in order to cast aspersions on his health.
In the John Podesta e-mails released by WikiLeaks, Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, called him a “menace,” and “shady,” while musing whether he was a “Manchurian candidate of the GOP secretly out to tank [Clinton].” Podesta, chair of the Clinton campaign, suggesting Brock was merely an “unhinged narcissist.” …
What Brock offers is a Faustian bargain: We can win, he promises, but only if you are prepared to shed your scruples, principles and ethics and descend into a back-alley gutter fight with the right. One question when you build a political weapon is who aims the gun. Brock is not a man of the left. His institutions are not grounded in the populist-progressive movement. He’s an agent of the Democratic establishment, funded significantly by its biggest donors.
One thing Brock has never lacked is cash to fund his war machine, as this article from a year ago at WaPo described:
The Democratic group American Bridge, which spent about $62 million on ads in 2020 to defeat President Donald Trump, plans to relaunch next month with a new effort aimed at defending the record of President Biden and a nine-figure ad budget to maintain Democratic congressional majorities through the midterm elections.
Former Montana governor Steve Bullock, former Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez and former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards will join as co-chairs, according to a statement from the group. They will join former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who began advising the group last year.
So, with all that said, that David Brock is organizing and launching an attack on Republican lawyers as a way of legally disarming Republicans in advance of 2022 and 2024 is no surprise. And that he intends to do it by attempting to ruin reputations and livelihoods particularly of less-known Republican lawyers also is no surprise.
Axios reports, High-powered group targets Trump lawyers’ livelihoods:
A dark money group with ties to Democratic Party heavyweights will spend millions this year to expose and try to disbar more than 100 lawyers who worked on Donald Trump’s post-election lawsuits, people involved with the effort tell Axios.
Why it matters: The 65 Project plans to begin filing complaints this week and will air ads in battleground states. It hopes to deter right-wing legal talent from signing on to any future GOP efforts to overturn elections — including the midterms or 2024.
Brock plans to focus on the weakest links:
Details: David Brock, who founded Media Matters for America and the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century and is a Hillary Clinton ally and prolific fundraiser for Democrats, is advising the group….
How it works: The 65 Project is targeting 111 attorneys in 26 states who were involved to some degree in efforts to challenge or reverse 2020 election results. They include lawyers at large national law firms with many partners and clients and lawyers at smaller, regional firms.
- It will air ads in battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
- It also will push the ABA and every state bar association to codify rules barring certain election challenges and adopt model language stating that “fraudulent and malicious lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results violate the ethical duties lawyers must abide by.”
- It plans to spend about $2.5 million in its first year and will operate through an existing nonprofit called Law Works.
Brock told Axios in an interview that the idea is to “not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.”
- “I think the littler fish are probably more vulnerable to what we’re doing,” Brock said. “You’re threatening their livelihood. And, you know, they’ve got reputations in their local communities.”
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air sees this as Brock creating an electoral distraction, but also a vicious campaign of personal destruction:
This effort, however, pursues character assassination of “littler fish” not out of a sense of justice but as a political machination in service of Biden. It’s a cynical manipulation of the legal system for some small measure of political benefit, and probably mostly futile anyway as voters simply won’t care. To the extent it has any impact at all, it will be to convince attorneys not to take on political candidates as clients — and that may wind up backfiring on some of the 65 Project’s allies, with one Hillary Rodham “Wiped With A Cloth” Clinton a poster girl for that point. Or for that matter, also one Hunter “Where’s My Laptop?” Biden, too. The payback on this kind of campaign would be scorched-earth all the way around.
The right to legal counsel is a benchmark of American justice, and with that comes a corollary that we don’t judge attorneys by their clients. In fact, we’ll hear Democrats make that same point with Ketanji Brown Jackson, who worked as a public defender and most likely had to work on behalf of a few creeps along the way. Should we have disbarred Brown Jackson over her client list, or should we recognize that she performed her job for her clients as we expect in this justice system?
Attacking attorneys because they worked for Trump directly attacks that principle. Even if the 65 Project can scrape up legitimate ethics complaints about these “littler fish,” their clear intent to whip up a witch hunt for the political benefit of desperate Democrats makes this a poisonous and corrosive campaign. Considering the people behind it, the “poisonous and corrosive” qualities are not a surprise, either.
Something I find interesting is that Brock used to be all over cable news, but there are almost no videos of him on cable in the past 3-4 years. American Bridge has started posting videos of Brock on cable news in recent weeks, but they all are old videos. Why would American Bridge be flooding the YouTube search results with old David Brock videos?
The only recent video I could find is Brock on a podcast. He comes across as a thoughtful and analytical person, not the David Brock we used to know on cable news.
But as the rollout of the attacks on Republican lawyers shows, while Brock may come across as more sedate, the objectives and methods haven’t changed.
Brock has identified a weakness in the Republican landscape, a weakness I’ve noted before. The Democrats, both mainstream and far left, have an enormous legal activist infrastructure on a scale that dwarfs the Republican side. So if Brock can intimidate Republican lawyers not to risk their livelihoods by challenging election law changes, practices, and results, that’s a strategic advantage.
If people and their families suffer, they are simply collateral damage in yet another David Brock war.
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“The right to legal counsel is a benchmark of American justice, and with that comes a corollary that we don’t judge attorneys by their clients. In fact, we’ll hear Democrats make that same point with Ketanji Brown Jackson, who worked as a public defender and most likely had to work on behalf of a few creeps along the way. Should we have disbarred Brown Jackson over her client list, or should we recognize that she performed her job for her clients as we expect in this justice system?”
To start I’m not endorsing this Brock character , he sounds pretty spurious.
With that disclaimer out the way I think it’s important to note with respect to the above quote there is a distinct difference between having a dodgy client and making claims in court that are are so weak that they fall apart even on the most cursory examination. How many times did we hear that the kraken was going to be released and it never happened. Besides which the Trump campaign noted internally that there was no election fraud yet continued to make those claims in public.
I do, in fact, juge lawyers by their clients and in how they go about defending them. But then, if you are a child rapist, I don’t care if you are also a democrat or also a republican. I feel that both you and your highly paid attorney should both burn in hell.
Although I understand the sentiment, be careful of what you wish for.
Child rapist or not, not every crime that is “alleged” actually is true in the first place. ( a variety of reasons for this beyond the scope of a single post)
I had one case where a soldier was charged with both rape (former spouse) and sodomy of the child with state experts in tow but the soldier was FACTUALLY DEPLOYED during the alleged incident. (I was the SAC who brought that verified information to the JAG defending him)
Granted that was before DNA but that alone could have destroyed an innocent soldier based on a vengeful lie.
Given both the accidental ( innocent type errors) combined with the deliberate ones, it is wrong at every level to deny any defendant the most vigorous defense possible regardless of the ALLEGED crime or “evidence” out in the public eye.
Multiple investigations in multiple battleground states have shown some, if not significant, election irregularities. While there was much more bluster than evidence in the timeframe between the election and Jan 6, it is possible that not all of that rhetoric can be blamed upon bravado.
There were efforts from multiple sides to halt or severely hinder investigations to the point that evidence is only just coming out from states like Wisconsin and Arizona, both of which suffered internally from powerful interests trying to keep any investigation from happening.
It should never be a crime to question the integrity of an election. There are few things as sacred in our constitutional republic. Evidence and proof are two different things. One is based on fact. The other is a judgment call, and it is difficult for anyone to make the judgment call on proof when evidence is not allowed to be investigated or the timeframe is so short that real investigations cannot happen.
Voting administrators in PA, WI and AZ appear to have broken their own laws and gotten a pass. Would those situations have changed the outcome of the election? Possibly. Sadly, we’ll likely never know.
The irony with with Brock’s plan is that if Dems lose big in the midterms, it will be his side challenging the election.
In the end, this is just another Leftist progressive case of “good for me, but not for thee.”
The Trump campaign never alleged fraud in a court room so your discussing it in context of legal cases he brought…..
That said how about suing MacDonald’s for making you fat? How about the New Yorker who sued Dunkin Donuts because the steak and egg sandwich costs more than the other breakfast sandwiches? How about suing google for giving bad directions on a map? How about suing Universal Studies for making a Halloween event too scary?
Have I made my point by bringing up frivolous lawsuits that are routinely happening in our legal system that match the Trump lawsuits or would you like some more?
Donald Trump also has nothing to do with this story, while his election lawyers could be targeted by this campaign the lawyers representing things like the State of Florida would also be targeted. This is a fascistic movement being led by one of the worst men in America to deprive the right of legal counsel.
You spout much but say very little.
They didn’t “allege” fraud because in order to prove fraud, there must first be an act. ( fraud requires an act and intent with knowledge, its a stepped process)
The courts ( for the most part) rejected the cases for standing and other administrative things- not matters of material fact. Not the same as “no evidence of fraud”.
Then when one sees all the efforts to stall, stop, obfuscate or otherwise manipulate election audits, the inference of hiding something is more than well founded. (where there is this much smoke- there is a fire)
See, if you actually knew the subject matter you were posting about, you wouldn’t open yourself up to such an easy rebuttal of your points but we both know you are a Politico troll here to sow leftist talking points.
All I know is, I read the affidavits the judges refused to read.
This is the true left. Forget ideas. Destroy people.
A practical advantage the left has is that ethical considerations are not even considered so they are not even speed bumps, They only consider effectiveness in gaining power or money.
Brock deserves to be targeted in the same way he targeting others. He deserves to be destroyed.
Is media matters a 501c tax deductible thing? Go after their 501C and if you win, watch him implode as he pays back taxes, penalties and interest.
Or the attorneys could fight back and do the same to the dem attorneys.
If Jackson has defended any murders, rapists, or other lowlifes then she’s directly in the firing line of the Brock standard. She could be crucified on that basis, and the question then asked, does American justice subscribe to the ‘Brock Standard’ or the historical right to legal counsel benchmark? And if the answer is that there should be a 2 tier justice system, well then you have another problem being dragged into the spotlight, and impetus for voters to avoid Democrats like the toxic radioactive plague they are.
We’ve already seen holes in the “historical right to legal counsel benchmark” when GoFundMe decided that Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t “worthy” of having a legal defense fund. Democrats have already passed the bar of abandoning that benchmark.
” the Brock standard”
Don’t forget that the only standards staunch leftists like Brock have are double standards.
Yes, it’s a 501(c)(3), just like WAJ Media which operates this blog. That doesn’t mean it can’t express strong political opinions, it just means it can’t actually say “Vote for this person”, or “Vote against this person”. It can still say “This person is a saint”, and “This person is the Son of Satan”, so long as it doesn’t say how that should affect your vote.
Can it be part of a major push to disbar any Republican lawyers that might raise any election challenges?
There is a longshot claim of chilling but that’s a long shot
I’m already chilled. Lawyer in Georgia.
Yes. That is not electioneering, so 501(c)(3)s are allowed to engage in it, just as they are allowed to oppose it (as WAJ Media is doing right in this post). They probably can’t say they’re going after “Republican lawyers” as such; they can say they’re going after lawyers who make “false claims”, and if those all happen to be Republican then oh well, that’s just how it is.
It would be interesting to dig through their efforts, and see how well they stick to that standard.
Normally, I wouldn’t care, unless it’s particularly egregious, but if they’re going to go after our right to representation, then going after their “non-profit” is fair game, too.
They have no need to be even-handed. They are allowed to be as biased as they like, just as this blog is allowed to. Remember they operate under the same rules. LI feels no need to expose dirt on Republicans; nor should it. So they don’t have to go after Democrats.
The line they can’t cross is telling people whom to vote for or against. LI used to do that, but since it got 501(c)(3) status it hasn’t. MM doesn’t either, but in both cases they leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about whom they would endorse if they could.
Churches operate under the same rule. They can invite candidates to visit on a Sunday and to speak from the pulpit, and they can encourage people to vote, but they can’t urge people to vote for the candidate who just spoke. People have to be smart enough to connect those dots by themselves.
That’s the thing, though: have they perfectly avoided endorsement?
And if not endorsement, what other things have they done, small or big, that would be rather problematic if a big spotlight is shined on them?
I personally wouldn’t care, under normal circumstances, if they don’t perfectly follow the law, but if they are going to deploy these kinds of tactics, then maybe it’s about time those tactics are deployed against them, too.
What a total douche nozzle.
Again, this guy shares his firm with a partner who was guy who swooped in and claimed all of BLM’s abandoned assets for Queen Hillary.
That’s an insult to douche nozzles, sir!
There is no doubt that he Electors Clause was violated in several battleground states But the courts refused to hold hearings on the evidence of fraud and dismissed cases on procedural grounds such as standing There is no doubt that a campaign against lawyers sho identity as conservatives or even raised the issues of the changes to the Electors Clause in addition to those who actively litigated for Trump ( poorly and without marshaling evidence as opposed to being active on social media ) has been underway since the election
Brock’s targeting is based on politics and is an abuse of the system. The complaints are frivolous, should be exposed for bias and dismissed. The legal system should not be used for an improper purpose, and Brock essentially admits it’s part of a partisan agenda.
Sounds like a Chicago thug with metro hair.
The fellow is a foul poisonous toad squatting and hunkering in the progressive political cesspool The stink sticks.
Ooops, sorry for the thumbs down…fat fingr
This cocksucker should be careful. A lot of people I know would kill a motherfucker for a lot less than he’s advocating.
It will take blood to stop this.
Somehow, I’m thinking that in the next year or so, pointing to a lawyer and saying “this lawyer works for Democrats” is going to be a hell of a lot more damaging than saying “this lawyer works for Republicans.”
Sadly not in the legal community.
The vast majority of people in the country have no idea what is going on, and don’t read websites like this. Of those that are paying attention, a significant portion support these measures.
I guess “this is what democracy looks like” now.
That is unmitigated bullshit. Of course, we can judge lawyers by who they like to defend. It says a lot about them and who they really are. Anyone who represented Trump has gone a long way to proving his patriotic bona fides. It’s laughable that anyone think one could be smeared because he was on Trump’s team.
Now, the leftists, who love to defend the scum of the Earth and make sure that the worst criminals and psychopaths are free to roam the streets …
They can only intimidate you if you let them.
Ask, “And?” when accused of something, don’t reply to the follow-up, and then forge ahead.
Have you ever been smeared in the press? It’s unpleasant.
This isnt Brocks plan. This is the Democrat plan.
Only one thing stops these people, and the one thing is firmly embedded in the US Constitution. It’s in the amendments, second one down.
I appreciate the sentiment and conceptually agree but the 2A hasn’t stopped anything yet and by itself, it never will.
One of the lawyers who may be a target is Ron Coleman. I follow him on twitter, and the thing is.. he witnessed election bullsht in Philadelphia,, he was there, he saw it first hand, so it is personal. That, and I don’t think he is a huge 45 fan, but he is a fan of fair elections….. His reply to this whole thing was “come and get me”. Bless and keep him.
David Brock is the poster child for why 501 3C’s and other forms of charitable designations should be removed from the tax code. These types of designations allow too many operations to flourish in a sea of hate and subterfuge. For every 1 entity that promotes and follows the rules, there are 20 that flout the rules and get away with it.
Many bar associations and state court systems have been influenced by the woke agenda Giuliani was one.such victim of the woke world
Right, isn’t Sidney Powell getting sanctioned by a judge in a state where she didn’t even bring a case?
What morons like David Brock don’t understand is if they succeed silencing the Right the leftist wing nuts will be silenced next by the global elites and government overseers.
What’s worse, there’s only four mechanisms of change:
The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box.
Youtube, Facebook, et al are taking away the soap box.
Rampant fraud neutralizes the ballot box.
This kind of thing neutralizes the jury box — if you can’t even have your day in court, how are you supposed to seek justice?
That leaves one last box, a box I particularly don’t want to see opened, except for having fun at the range. But it will be opened, if we are left with no other option.
(Well, there’s a fifth box, “pandora’s box”, where we just aren’t governable, but that is just a weird box in and of itself, and it may even push our elites to the point where we have to open the ammo box just to defend ourselves!)
With how the courts are run in some states, I’m not sure they haven’t already won. In Wa they are trying to criminalize questioning the results.
Meanwhile, Democrats are already claiming the 2022 election is rigged. Shouldn’t they be prosecuted?
Nah. Questioning election integrity is different when Democrats do it.
/sarc
The Democrats are quietly working to subvert the mid-terms. It will be a lot more difficult but they’re up to it. That they are claiming today that the elections will be ‘rigged’ is both pre-emptory to attack the Pubs, and a quiet promise of what they’ll do.
This clown proves all you need are connections to get a platform and you can spout any stupidity you want.
d. brock=A capital “RICHARD CRANIUM”……..self made!
Actually, I believe he’s homosexual which makes it quite possible some evil adult made him the way he is, when he was a child.
http://www.MaleSurvivor.org.
It wasn’t your fault; you can get help.
Gee, let’s put all these nice people like Brock and AOC in charge of government health care.
That’s what kept running through my mind; The purveyors of Covid Panic porn, “health care is a right” crowd, were the same harpies telling me if I didn’t do as I was told I didn’t deserve to live.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/do-unvaccinated-deserve-scarce-icu-beds/
I’m not going to forget their sh*t. Are you?
No, I will not. I will remember until my last breath, whenever that shall be.
So in 2011 Media Matters targeted Fox News.
How has that worked out for them?
Take a look at these links re the woke court system in NY, and how Giulani was treatedhttps://ww2.nycourts.gov/careers/diversity/index.shtml https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/ad1/calendar/List_Word/2021/06_Jun/24/PDF/Matter%20of%20Giuliani%20(2021-00506)%20PC.pdf Alan Dershowitz was deemed persona non grata for appearing on Fox in defense of constitutional values, supporting Israel and defending Trump in the first impeachment trial and in doing so presented a great lecture on presidential power . This aspect of the assault on conservatives is well under way and began with Trump’s lawyers being forced to resign from his representation after the election
It’s probably also what happened to Trump’s accountants.
I loathe Hillary as much as anyone reading this blog, but one criticism of her back in 2016 was totally beyond the pale, and that was her representing (and securing acquittal of) an accused rapist. She was doing the job she was paid to do, and did it successfully and professionally. When we go down the road Brock is going (and I remember when he was a conservative contributor to The American Spectator–guess the other side was more lucrative), the Left ain’t gonna like it.
Coming up next: smear campaigns against Marc Elias et al.
The accusation is that she didn’t do it professionally, that she did it by unethical means.
I was not aware of that. Can you provide more details?
She defended the alleged rapist by personally attacking the young girl who was his alleged victim, making her out to be a lying slut so the jury wouldn’t believe her. Worse, she didn’t do this as a regretful duty; she laughed about it.
OK, maybe the girl was a lying slut, but her acting like this is inconsistent with every stand she’s taken publicly.
Here’s the weird thing about David Brock. Back in the 1990s, he wrote for The American Spectator, the meanest, nastiest conservative magazine around (in a good way). And he produced several devastating exposés of the Clintons.
It would be one thing if he had a change of principle that moved him to the Left. He’s homosexual, though that was known at TAS and didn’t bother anybody.
But instead he seems to have lost all principle, embracing the Clintons and adopting unethical tactics to a degree that offends even fellow leftists.
So, just maybe he’s a prostitute?
Any scheme for blocking access to legal representation is a conspiracy to suppress civil rights, which is both a crime and a tort under the 1964 and 65 civil rights acts.
This is most straightforward when lawyers are threatened with black listing for representing a particular individual, but it’s just as dangerous when they go after lawyers who are trying to protect our democratic system, which seems to be what Brock is talking about here.
One of the keys to the Democratic party’s theft of the 2020 elections was their ability to throw massive legal resources into defending the illegal steps that were taken by democratic governors to implement mail-in voting in response to Covid. Now in addition to their advantage in the amount of legal resources they control they want to kneecap republican access to legal resources.
Well, the Civil Rights acts are written to be very powerful. If instead of being intimidated, conservative lawyers use the rights Acts to defend against such attacks they could do very well tor themselves, and help save the country in the process.
Isn’t that what RICO is for?
No. Civil RICO (which is what you’re talking about) isn’t really for anything, it was invented to make politicians look good. Here’s a good explainer of what RICO is and — more importantly — isn’t.
Ukraine doesn’t matter because of threats like this.