But Who Lawyers the Lawyers?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:00 Clip: You must never, ever give up or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling. That is you mission. That is moral obligation. That is mandate. Get out there and do it. Get in the way. Change happens because people care. The people have the power to make this life free and beautiful. To make this live a wonderful adventure.

0:00:38 Clip: I still believe with all my heart, America can be a place where no child is left hungry, no community is left behind, and no one gets told they don't belong. Country is always worth it.

0:00:58 Thomas: Hello and Welcome to Opening Arguments, this is episode 1129. am your host, Thomas Smith, and I am so excited for today's show. Ever since Matt began his obsession with John Eastman, and then we covered John Eastman's horrible movie, referenced the 65 Project. And of course, Alan Dershowitz had some ridiculously unlawyerly quotes about the 65 project in that, I guess we'll call it a documentary, even though I don't think it deserves to be called that. But anyway, point is, is ever since all that, we have been dying to talk to somebody from the 65 Project. If you don't remember, these are folks that took it upon themselves to try to actually get lawyers in trouble for the coup that they did or attempted to do in 2020. a super cool story and obviously from our point of view, a very worthwhile project and something I believe we needed, the 65 Project. Honestly, it's sad indictments of the profession, or at least, you captured areas of the the profession that you even need a 65 project. We did, and they've done some incredible work. We're really excited to talk to Managing Director Michael Teter about what they've done, what they're looking to do going forward. In kind of an interesting place right now, I suppose. I mean, they have ongoing cases, but but also looking to the future. What's that going to look like? Find out in the interview. But first I need to remind you that there's a hangout coming, a patron hangout coming come in a few days. In a couple a days. It's February 26th, Tuesday. That's 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern. Was super fun last time. Keep an eye on Patreon and all the social media will tell you how to join. We really enjoyed interacting with you folks last time, can't wait to do it again. All right, we will take our usual break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/law. as little as a dollar and you get to avoid the ads, you don't have to hear them anymore. Also you might get to come to that live Q&A, interact with this. patreon.com/law. All after this break we'll get over to our interview can't wait to talk about the 65 project today's

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0:04:23 Matt: We're joined today by Michael J. Teeter, the managing director of the 65 Project. We're going to talk about the project and what it's up to these days. And this is something we've been wanting to talk About for a while now since we found out about it. Have you seen The Eastman Dilemma? Are you familiar with The Eastmen Dilemma?

0:04:36 Michael: Have not actually, I am familiar. Which

0:04:37 Thomas: Well, are you a fan of cinema?

0:04:40 Michael: Yeah. Are many Eastman dilemmas, but I am familiar with it. I have no idea. I have watched it.

0:04:48 Matt: Probably aware the 65 Project is a villain in that film.

0:04:51 Michael: I do know that.

0:04:52 Matt: Okay. Which is kind of what inspired us to want to talk to you because it sounded like the way that it was being described, you guys were doing awesome work. So we went and looked at it and,

0:04:59 Thomas: Well according to Alan Dershowitz, scholar that he is, you shouldn't even have the right to organize in any way. You shouldn't have the right associate. He almost literally says that. You must be doing something right.

0:05:11 Michael: Know, I very much appreciate the allies and the friends that we have, but I appreciate more of the enemies that we've made. So, yes.

0:05:16 Matt: That's right. Judge you by your enemies. That's a very good way to go. So tell us a little bit, how did this thing get going and what is it?

0:05:24 Michael: We launched in March of 2022. It together from a woman named Melissa Moss, who had worked in various aspects, some within the Democratic Party, but more recently in bipartisan projects to ensure the rule of law and accountability. And she was troubled by the fact that following the 2020 election, there had been no real effort to hold accountable the lawyers who had sought to subvert democracy. And so she recruited me. We launched the effort in March with a string of filings against lawyers who had largely either advised Donald Trump in the 2020 aftermath of the election or had participated in some form in shenanigans, legal shenanigos, whether that be serving as false electors, actually participating in the January 6th insurrection, or helping create the fake elector plot. So we launched then with the idea that we'd want to hold accountable the lawyers who had participated in the effort, not just to dissuade them from taking future actions, but really to create a larger deterrent effect so that the legal community knows that you can't use your law license to democracy.

0:06:30 Matt: Yeah. And regular listeners know this is kind of an obsession of mine is the fact that we cannot transition to autocracy, to authoritarianism, to fascism, whatever it is, without the help of lawyers, if you want to do it in a bloodless kind of way. And I was really impressed by just looking through the bar complaints, how thorough these are. Do you have some kind of background in bar discipline or ethics? How'd you come to this?

0:06:48 Michael: Mean, I'd like to say I have a background in ethics, but I don't have a, I don'T have a back, I DON'T have A background in bar complaints. I had taught constitutional law, I taught administrative law. I had worked as a lawyer for a number of years. And as a former professor, it me that this is how law students and young lawyers could view the profession, that this was appropriate behavior. So it was a project that I was immediately interested in. In terms of the background and the complaints themselves, we made a decision that we couldn't just file a very short complaint and have the bar disciplinary office is, then take it from there. We needed to be very thorough. We need to make sure that we had reviewed all the pleadings that we were complaining about and that we would provide for the bar associations, the background, the facts, and the rules specifically that we thought the lawyers had violated more as a way to help them through the process, the bar association through the process than anything else.

0:06:52 Matt: Fair enough. Mm -hmm.

0:07:46 Thomas: Yeah. I wanted to ask as the non -lawyer of the show, we've been doing this a while and it feels to me, this is my perception, could be wrong. It feels to me like we talk about lawyers who are behaving pretty badly, pretty unethically a lot. And it feels like the times where there are actual consequences are incredibly rare. Like it's almost become a joke on the show that like, oh, well, there's going to be no, unless you steal client money, that's been like kind of my perception. Now, is that unfair? Or if not, like, how did you find this? Like what were were your expectations of, of kind of the success you'd have and what was the reality?

0:08:19 Michael: I think it's a little unfair because if you sleep with with your client, that will also get you disciplined. So it's not

0:08:24 Matt: Know, good to know.

0:08:25 Thomas: There's two things, but you F democracy, sorry.

0:08:25 Michael: Stealing their money. It's totally fine. No, I think you're right. We, of all, you have to understand, of course, the legal system and the disciplinary system is in which the profession polices itself. And so there is disincentive of over -prosecution, over discipline. Don't want to be handing out discipline to other lawyers, both because it's their colleagues, right? Communities. It's not a national association like the American Bar Association disciplining a lawyer in Maryland or Pennsylvania. It's the Pennsylvania Bar disciplining lawyers from Pennsylvania. And so there's reticence and hesitation there. Not neutral tribunals, although they try to be. But in essence, when you you have a system in which the lawyers are policing themselves, there's going to be some, mean, I would say some hesitation towards over -enforcement. In addition to that, this was a phenomenon, the 2020 election and the use of the legal system to try to overturn fair and free elections was a new phenomenon. It was a New Problem. And the legal system and the bar disciplinary offices were not, I don't think, fully equipped, both in terms of resources, but in terms of mindset to address the need for large -scale discipline in that context. The last time that they had seen something similar to that, quite frankly, was Watergate. And even then it was cabined to 40 or so lawyers, which sounded like a lot at the time,

0:09:56 Michael: But now seems to pale in comparison.

0:09:59 Matt: Name, of course, comes from the fact that there were 65 election -related lawsuits that were the initiation of this that you're responding to. Is that right?

0:10:06 Michael: That's right. That's right, the 65 Projects name comes from those 65 lawsuits.

0:10:09 Matt: So I'm just wondering about the selection criteria, how you go through this. Were there any that you looked through that you thought, this isn't quite enough or this isn t worth reporting.

0:10:16 Michael: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, the majority of lawyers, we identified 111 lawyers who had participated in some form of litigation following the 2020 election. And I think of those lawyers, we probably filed bar complaints against less than half. Filed now over 88 bar complaints because that then within ranks of complainants. State attorneys general who had participated in the Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit. We had filed against to Donald Trump. We filed against lawyers who had been, you know, someone like Ken Cheesebrough who had not actively participated necessarily in litigation, but who was behind the scenes. In terms of lawyers who actually participate in litigation I don't think that we filed against a majority of them because we wanted the air on the the side of caution. We've reviewed every filing. There were lawyers, for example, who maybe filed something that I didn't think was legally meritorious, but was not based on false sets of facts, not based upon false legal arguments. For example, there's an instance in Arizona where they filed a lawsuit that was related to the use of Sharpies on absentee ballots. They withdrew, voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit when they realized that the outcome would not be dependent on how that litigation proceeded. Again, probably don't agree with the of the complaint, but in terms of whether or not it crossed an ethical line, it didn't. And so we didn't file bar complaints against those individuals.

0:11:40 Matt: Whereas in Arizona, the Dershowitz, was it Lakeview, the Arizona case, right? So that you

0:11:46 Michael: We did report Alan Dershowitz. And of course, that was in 2022, as opposed to 2020. But we Derschwitz. Did file a complaint against him and as well as other lawyers, and those are still proceeding. And he was also sanctioned by the court itself that was handling the matter.

0:12:01 Thomas: Wow. Can you remind me what that, what that case was? Sorry.

0:12:04 Michael: An attempt to overturn the gubernatorial election. Refused to concede and they had misstated facts about what the law required, what had transpired. And the court, and if I'm, you know, we fought a lot of these, so I might be wrong, but I believe it was a Republican appointee disciplined Alan Alan Dershowitz and the other lawyers involved in the case because they had, you know, with sanctions, with monetary fines for having filed the lawsuit that was based on false set of facts. And DERSHOWITZ's defense is like, all I did was sign the brief. Well, yes.

0:12:39 Thomas: Did was sign the order that, yeah.

0:12:40 Matt: That'll do it.

0:12:41 Michael: That does it. Rule 11 says that does het for you.

0:12:44 Matt: Yeah, wow. Saw even you went back and updated your complaint against Jenna Ellis. So you're watching these things and updating as you need to?

0:12:50 Michael: Are. And, you knows, Jenna Ellis was disciplined. She received a and then she pleaded guilty in the Georgia case. And because of that, she was pleading guilty to a crime of moral turpitude, which has an additional automatic sanctions associated with it. And so we updated and asked for the Colorado Bar to consider additional sanctions against her because she was plead guilty to elements of a crime that we had not based our original complaint on. And so that was new information. And the bar did reach an with her to suspend her license for, I believe it's three years.

0:13:28 Matt: Wow. So what do you say to Eastman Dilemma? I think it was multiple attorneys, but especially Dershowitz in that movie was saying, this is just lawfare. This is unfair. They shouldn't be doing this. Sounds like you're being pretty careful about things.

0:13:40 Michael: Being, some might even say overly cautious about the approach we take, but yeah, we are being careful. And it's not lawfare. Look, again, the fact that we partly filed against probably less than half of the lawyers who litigated in 2020 is a demonstration of that fact. We are also a bipartisan organization. We have lawyers on our advisory committee who have served in Republican administrations, including one who is the acting attorney general of the United States in the transition from the George H .W. Bush to Clinton administration. He served as acting attorney journal. So this is not a lawfare. This is an attempt to protect the legal profession from overzealous lawyers who are willing to use their law license and the professional reputation to assist in the overthrow of democracy in the United States. If you want to quibble with the approach we take, I understand it, but I think the real thrust of the complaint should be directed to those lawyers who are willing to engage in the use of the court system to subvert democracy.

0:14:43 Thomas: Correct me if I'm wrong. It's not as though you folks get the final say, right? I mean, there's still a professional body that makes this determination.

0:14:51 Michael: Exactly right. And it's kind of like saying that the criminal system is an attempt at lawfare. If you violate a law, you have consequences. If you violate the rules of professional conduct, there are consequences. And it's particularly interesting that Alan Dershowitz would make this complaint because he wanted two lawyers who had filed a lawsuit against him or had brought him into a lawsuit to be sanctioned in to the Jeffrey Epstein matter. He filed bar complaints. I believe he's threatened to file bar complaints, he might've done it and said that those two lawyers, including one who was a former United district court judge and a law professor, he wanted them sanctioned because how dare they attack him and that way. So if Dershowitz thinks his reputation warrants bar complaints against those who violate it, then certainly democracy ought to be protected in the same kind of way.

0:15:20 Thomas: How

0:15:46 Matt: Sure. It seems like you were really trying to draw the line at actually provably false facts and false legal claims. You said both. How do you define a false legal claim?

0:15:54 Michael: False legal claim, we start with with what the court decision said. The have overall a very good job in 2020 explaining why the kind of legal claims that, for example, someone like Sidney Powell was asking or other lawyers, Jim Bopp or others, were beyond the pale. For example, they in some lawsuits that five or six potential plaintiffs had their votes not counted Republican. They think they're Republicans because they hadn't signed the right form or they hadn' turned in their ballot in time or they were denied the right. So therefore, the entire election should be thrown out and two million people's ballots who did legally cast their ballots should be thrown out. There was no foundation for making such requests. There is no legal basis for for redress. There was no basis for it in the law. Or they would ignore concepts, very standard concepts in election law like latches and the amount of time you take to challenge the rules. And so that was often the case that the lawyers were disregarding the law or trying to use the 14th Amendment in ways that are, you now are appropriate appropriate considering apparently the 14th Amendment doesn't mean what it says, but in 2020

0:17:07 Michael: Were new and had no basis in law. And then, of course, the facts side, they just manufactured facts, relied on affidavits that were manufactured, relied upon false statements. So that's what we're talking about. And if you have a combination of those two things, you are certainly violating your duty of candor to the court.

0:17:24 Thomas: Much did feel like it was on... I know you've talked about how thorough you wanted to be and all that. I would think, again, non -lawyer here, I would hope that the bar would do that anyway, but how much didyou feel likeit was more incumbent upon you folks to come up with all this stuff, or do they do an in -depth investigation of things like like this? There?

0:17:44 Michael: Know, we're dealing with 50 different disciplinary processes. Processes. None of them are identical and of them are staffed the same and none of them treated each of these issues the same. So it depended on which bar association we were addressing. We from the outset and continue to think that it's best for us to provide as much of the analysis as possible so that they can see it the way we see it and can make it as easy on them as possible. I think that there have been a number of state bars that have have been exemplary, even if I don't always agree with the outcomes. Even those that are that way, I still think were aided by the analysis that we did. Give you one example. Georgia, of the fake electors, who is a lawyer, we didn't file against all the fake collectors, but the fake collectors who are lawyers in Georgia, had one bar complaint already filed against them by a member of the public, and the the Georgia court bar had had dismissed it. We followed our complaint and we noted the important role that this fake elector did in signing a document as a fake elector and having to submit it to the United States District Court as part of that process. That created a different duty on that lawyer by signing something that was being submitted to the U .S. District Judge as a as Elector. And the Georgia Disciplinary Board then moved it forward, advanced it to a full investigation, and that lawyer had to hire his own lawyer and defend against it. So I think that the bar associations, the more work you do for them, the better.

0:19:10 Matt: Many of these have in some kind of discipline so far.

0:19:13 Michael: Know, it's hard for us to know, partly because some bars treat us as complainants and so therefore will keep us updated and others will not. In fact, there have been times where we've learned about a discipline, not having been told about it by the bar, but by about it through other members of that legal community or learning about about it by going to the individual lawyers, the bar's website and seeing that there had been discipline. So, you know, we don't have an accurate count. We know that there have been approximately 13 lawyers who have received discipline through our efforts. We think it's probably more, but we don'T know for sure.

0:19:47 Thomas: Examples there? Can you tell us some of the kinds of things and kinds of discipline people face?

0:19:52 Michael: Ellis was, one of the big ones in of names that people know. She was in Colorado and she He was disciplined twice. Have Alex Culloden in Arizona, who I'm kind of particularly proud that he was disciplined and quite frankly impressed with the Arizona bar for that process because he's also a state representative and he had participated in litigation. And many of the bars, feels like, go out of their way to ensure that if the was simply participating in litigation and there was any kind of colorable claim, they They don't want to move forward with discipline, but Arizona, I think, made the right choice on that one. Participated in the Eastman complaint, less so in California, but in other jurisdictions. Those are some. Were some lawyers in Georgia who have also faced discipline, and there are some that are still pending in Georgia as well.

0:20:39 Matt: Of these have been found to be frivolous, or that they've just rejected you immediately, right?

0:20:43 Michael: Correct. Correct. None have rejected us immediately, although I would say that the complaints that were filed with regards to the attorneys general were largely dismissed relatively quickly. Weren't surprised by that, but nevertheless, it was an important statement to make and we wanted to make it.

0:20:58 Matt: I agree.

0:20:59 Michael: Also had the complaint that we filed against Senator Cruz, Ted Cruz recruits in Texas dismissed, not quickly, but not, didn't take them that long either. We were also as well expecting that.

0:21:11 Matt: Always going to be harder with an elected official, I assume.

0:21:13 Thomas: I was going to say, so why is that exactly? Do they have more leeway just because they're elected?

0:21:18 Michael: I think, I mean, there's a combination of things. One is that as a politician, whether you're on the left or right, you might make misstatements of fact. And, and, you Know, the bar disciplinary process and the bar does not want to be seen as impeding people's right of free speech. So drawing the line between a politician and somebody acting in their capacity as a lawyer is an important one. And the bar know, lean towards a side that these individuals were nevertheless acting as kind of as public officials or as potentially as partisan individuals as opposed to necessarily in their capacity. Official We saw it with a Ted Cruz complaint, for example, to give the hook that he said in interviews that he had agreed to represent Donald Trump before the United States Supreme Court. And in our mind, that created an attorney -client relationship. Asked him to be his lawyer. Cruz accepted being his lawyer, your attorney - client privilege, and now you're acting as a lawyer, not a senator. And we didn't focus on the things that Senator Cruz said on the the Senate floor. We focused exclusively on his public comments after he said he accepted the representation, but the bar still felt that he was acting as a politician, not as a lawyer.

0:22:26 Michael: One aspect of it. The other, of course, is that the bars are facing an onslaught of litigation and focus of attention largely from right -leaning politicians who challenge the right right of the bar to require membership in it and then engage in forms of speech that they don't agree with, the politicians don't agree with. And so they're already under threat and they certainly didn't want to be viewed as participating in a partisan disciplinary process. My assumption.

0:22:57 Matt: I presume, one of the biggest criticisms that you receive, even though you are a bipartisan organization, that there's a perception that you're going after conservative lawyers. And I was just wondering, I think maybe one of the best proofs of this is that there is no Stephen Miller version of this. There's no America First legal doing a 65 project. Do you think they'd get too far if they tried to do that?

0:23:13 Michael: I can tell you that Stephen Miller's group, America First Legal, filed a a bar complaint against me. So I, uh, they are there, you know, I mean, speak of the devil and, um, and, of course we took that as a sign of the efficacy of our work. They filed a few weeks before the 2024 election. And so they were trying to, uh intimidate us. I don't know what, if that's what it was, but that's my assumption.

0:23:36 Thomas: And how did that go?

0:23:36 Matt: What'd you do?

0:23:38 Michael: Well, I'm in a week later, we filed a couple of bar complaints against people. So, I don' think it, I, don't think it affected us in that way. But I did learn a couple of weeks ago that the complaint had been dismissed. They didn't, bar did not even ask for me to respond to it. So I think that that was proof is in the pudding as they say, right?

0:23:53 Matt: Good. It's right there. Yeah. What the basis even? What were they trying to do? You just that you're harassing people?

0:23:58 Michael: Yeah. That I'm engaging in lawfare by filing bar complaints against people. This was, this one was filed by Stephen Pasatino. Stefan, I don't remember his first name, Pasateno, who was the lawyer for Cassidy Hutchinson, And if you remember, she was Mark Meadows' assistant who then testified, and she had alleged that Pasatino had given her, lawyer, had persuaded her to testify untruthfully before the January 5th committee originally.

0:24:25 Michael: And enough, that complaint was dismissed by the Georgia Bar because, my understanding, at least, is that because Cassidy Hutchinson decided not to participate in the disciplinary investigation. So they couldn't make a case out, but then he joined in filing a bar complaint against me, which will say that it's certainly true that we have filed exclusively lawyers who would lean conservative, maybe be Republican, but that's of course, because they're the lawyers who sought to overturn the election in 2020. I I mean, said earlier, comparing it to the legal system, the criminal justice system, you, pursue, you know, indictments against those who have committed crimes. So those who are not committing crimes don't get indicted. And that's similar to what we're facing here.

0:25:08 Matt: Pretty much and you mentioned that in the bar complaint that filed against you that I don't know did they actually use the word lawfare? Is that something that state bars recognize as a a thing.

0:25:19 Michael: I think they did use it. I I'll be honest. I only glanced at it. My, uh, my wonderful 19 year old son read it more thoroughly than I did for me on my behalf. Half so he summarized it for me but um I didn't read it um he I was assured by him that our complaints are much more thorough and well done yeah

0:25:37 Matt: I'm sure. Well, they have facts behind them. Yeah, that'll help.

0:25:40 Michael: That helps well

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0:27:16 Thomas: Talking about the elected officials thing, we've been talking about a certain Thursday night massacre, and I may have been getting, I don't know if I'll say my hopes up, but it has felt like there's some disbarrable stuff there. And it felt like, especially with Bovee, however we say it, it feels like such an of anything resembling law that I was really hoping that there could be some sort of bar discipline. But do you think that, you know, being an elected official, it kind of the chances are slim there?

0:27:46 Michael: He's not elected he's he's still just appointed but he is yeah um political pointy um he think that york has demonstrated a willingness to sometimes be aggressive in their protection of the legal profession. And so my hope is that he will face discipline. I imagine, I know that there are organizations and individuals who are interested in encouraging bar to investigate his conduct, and I believe that will happen.

0:27:48 Thomas: Or sorry, being part of. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Political. Yeah.

0:28:16 Matt: It's all right out there. It's hard to miss.

0:28:18 Michael: Hard to miss. It doesn't require a lot. And, you know, I think that we're in a dangerous moment, and you started this with with the correct observation that the greatest threat to the rule of law, it comes from when it's from within, you know, and you can't have authoritarianism without lawyers supporting the authoritarian. And it's extremely important for the legal profession to define the kind of conduct that's acceptable and appropriate and to discipline those who cross the line. And I think that Bovey or however it's pronounced, I've heard it so many different ways now, by many different people who I respect. So I would like to hear him say it.

0:28:51 Matt: Me too.

0:28:55 Thomas: We even did. And we can't remember. He said it in the Trump hearing.

0:28:57 Michael: Still can't. Yeah, I know. I know during the Trump hearing, he said it. When he was making material statements of, yeah, he was taking action, when he's making false statements of fact and illegal proceeding, yeah. Knows if that statement of his last name, though, is correct or not.

0:29:00 Thomas: I think it was bovie yeah ah yeah yeah

0:29:11 Michael: And so he, a true threat. And the legal system needs to get the point of being concerned about focusing overzealously on lawyers and worry about protecting democracy and protecting the profession from, of course, the reputational consequences of lawyers engaging in this kind of misconduct. And more importantly, the real systematic undercutting of the rule of law and that then democracy. Democracy.

0:29:36 Matt: Yeah, I really think it's just about the best form of targeted resistance that I can imagine, just going straight for the people that are actually effectuating this. Because we're We're talking about this in the context of this disaster that's in progress in DOJ right now, as we're recording this, that really just this one person, Emil Boeve, is doing that much damage. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of other people that are forcing this. Somebody else probably would have ended up doing it. But I guess I just want to ask you, since we're talking about this, your most recent complaint was against Edward Martin, the U .S. attorney for D .C. And the first time you've gone into this administration? You've filed against something that's happened recently?

0:30:08 Michael: I mean, we're only four weeks in.

0:30:10 Matt: Sure. Right. Well, it's just because my understanding of your original ambit was you're looking at the 65.

0:30:13 Thomas: Flip over the sign days since bar complaint if yeah they got all the way to whatever 20 something

0:30:21 Michael: 27. We see it as ongoing. It's probably transformed a little bit. I did try to find some humor in the aftermath of the 2024 election. And the only that I could come up with is that the 65 Project's ambition since launch was to ensure that there wasn't litigation after the 2024 election. We succeeded, right? There was not litigation after 2024 election, so we needed to reimagine what our purpose is and ensuring lawyers who abuse the legal system and undermine the rule of law face consequence seems appropriate and more urgent than even after the 2020 election.

0:30:22 Matt: Mission is ongoing, obviously. Well, especially Edward Martin. I mean, we talked about this on the show already, but he, just so everybody understands, he was actively on the record representing a defendant that he signed off on dismissing one of the January 6th cases against, right, as prosecutor? Skater.

0:31:11 Thomas: That guy

0:31:12 Michael: Yes, it's the understanding of conflict of interest is that you cannot appear on both sides of the versus, right? You can't be, you know, representing the plaintiff and the defendant, or in this case, the United States government and the defendant. And yet he managed to do that. I've never seen it before. I hope to never see it again.

0:31:33 Michael: I can't imagine a lawyer who would be willing to do this. I don't know. I'm not sure it would not have taken much for him to have somebody else in his office sign off on the dismissal but he you know I think that we've reached the point of shamelessness and I think that where people believe that they they are unaccountable to the electorate to the governing bodies to the courts um and we have to demonstrate a willingness to hold these people accountable just as a message to others that there accountability and there will will be responsibility to be had.

0:31:33 Matt: It's incredible. Exactly. It really seems across the board between what we're just talking about with DIJ and Emil Bove and just everything that Edward Martin seems to be doing and everything going on with Doge and everything else. That really is it. Everybody seems to think that they're going to come out of this without any trouble. And it's shocking still, even to me, to watch these things happen.

0:32:20 Thomas: A Well, a lot of the shamelessness, I mean, I think sometimes people look at it as, oh, look at the incompetence. If they had just done this, it's like, I don't know. I think that's kind of the point. Like, I Think they want to demonstrate how little they are worried about consequences sometimes.

0:32:36 Michael: I think that's right. I think they've now demonstrated, I think they've proven a few things. One, facts don't matter. We can make up our own set of facts. So it doesn't matter there's no news organization that can hold us accountable. In fact, we've seen the news organizations, quite frankly, trying to kowtow to the new administration through some form of legal bribery, it feels like by paying off defamation cases. They're not going to hold hold them accountable to the same extent that maybe they would have in the past. The legal system has been slow to hold people accountable. Certainly on the criminal side, we've seen Trump and many of his allies escape criminal liability, and the ones who were held accountable have just been pardoned. So what is the consequence to them? It seems like it's minimal, if any, and it's certainly not felt by those at the highest level. The ones who faced consequence primarily were those who participated in the January 6th insurrection, but were ordinary citizens who showed up believing the lies that they had been told by Fox and Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump.

0:33:38 Thomas: Talked about it a little bit already, but I'm wondering what had been the thinking when it came to your mission going forward? I mean, folks were looking at this as sort of a one -time mission resulting from what happened in 2020? It going to depend on what What happened in 2024? How were you looking at that?

0:33:53 Michael: A great question. I think when we first launched our of 2022, we had an aim towards hoping that we would deter kind legal system by 2024 and we would watch what happened in 2024 and determine whether or not lawyers were still viewing attempts to overturn democracy as a tool in the partisan playbook. That they would continue to resort to false claims of fact, false claims of law to kind of overturn democracy. We don't know if it's dropped out of the playbook a little bit. It certainly didn't seem like it was going to if Donald Trump had lost the 2024 election that we imagine it seemed like they were gearing up to engage in the same kind of behavior that they engaged in 2020. So we'll have to kind of monitor it. We expect to be around for a while longer.

0:34:40 Michael: And are reimagining in the short term our purpose to kind of ensure that the legal profession is not supporting and participating in the undermining of the rule of law, which is, of course, what we're seeing right now.

0:34:55 Matt: And as to your original mission, you're just monitoring the complaints you have filed so far? You filed what you're going to file?

0:35:00 Michael: What we were going to file. We are still monitoring. We're responding still occasionally to bars asking for additional information or replies, and we're still in that process. But again, nothing in 2024 other than we did file bar complaints against two lawyers in Georgia who had, right before the election, sought to engage in kind of legal systems equivalent to what had happened in 2020. And the courts turned them down and talked about the baselessness of their lawsuit. So we filed bar complaints against them and monitoring those. But then in terms of post -election work, we haven't filed any bar complaints. We're not anticipating filing

0:35:39 Thomas: Well, it was a close call because I know in Pennsylvania, Trump was really worried about voter fraud. And then all of a sudden, I guess it completely dissipated somehow. It's weird. Went from total fraud to zero. So I'll have to figure out how that happened.

0:35:48 Michael: Yeah, it's amazing how that works. Yeah, zero. And in the past, when you hold lead initially and then the other person takes the lead from you, then it's fraud. But when you start out by trailing and then come back, it's not fraud.

0:36:07 Thomas: Interesting.

0:36:07 Michael: It's amazing how that works. Yeah.

0:36:09 Thomas: Must be how the voting machines work. I don't know. I'm not a scientist.

0:36:13 Matt: I know you probably don't want to talk about anything you might have coming up, but I assume you probably have a number of things might be coming out sometime soon? Soon.

0:36:20 Michael: We are We're still overseeing and monitoring aspects of what the administration is doing and the role that lawyers are playing in that. We certainly are concerned about the use of threats of criminal prosecution to require policy actions by whether be local elected officials or state elected officials. And it's across the board. And Matt, I know, as the immigration lawyer, you this too, that sanctuary cities are being threatened, California being one of them. And the Ninth Circuit has upheld California's sanctuary city law, so it's been tested. And so to the extent that lawyers are going to disregard what the has said and threaten criminal prosecutions, we think that that's overstepping the profession's rules of conduct. So we're going to be monitoring that as well.

0:37:09 Matt: That's great. Yeah, I mean, apparently Eric Adams... Adam's thought he could make a deal to violate New York law. We'll see how that plays out, I guess, but in

0:37:14 Michael: Well, he successfully, right? I mean, this is the part that's kind of frustrating to those of us who believe in the rule of law. The ones who don't seem to be winning some of the time. You know, Eric Adams is an example of that for the short term.

0:37:27 Matt: The short term, we'll see.

0:37:29 Thomas: Yeah, sorry if I miss this, but was this like, you basis? How many people, how many lawyers were involved in this project? It seems like, I mean, putting together these briefs, these sort of investigations almost, it seems like a ton of labor.

0:37:44 Michael: Been. It's not volunteer for me and we hired research staff as well so we we had a lot of research help. We had a lot of lawyers who volunteered in and have been playing an instrumental role in moving us forward in that way. And, you know, fortunately we've had a little bit of time to have a lot more of willingness on the part of really lawyers across the country to our effort. So it's, as a lawyer who what happened in 2020, I was offended and angered. And I think that when we launched, we felt a wave of support from the legal community because they had felt the same things. And so that's been beneficial as well, as a reminder that, first of all, most lawyers believe in the oath that they take and want to abide by it and believe in The Legal System's to the rule of law and democracy. So encouraged by that.

0:38:32 Matt: As far as I can tell, your name's on every one of these things. You're making a lot of friends around the country. And

0:38:38 Michael: Friends. Yeah, my name's on all of them. I have final authority to sign every one of them, We complaint against Ted Cruz was the only one in which we enlisted additional signatories. We had a former state ABA president, I believe, and we had a former judge and we have lawyers within the community in Texas. And, you know, candidly, they were subjected to probably some abuse and some nasty emails. And we don't want to subject people to that. In addition, it takes a lot longer, quite frankly, when you're trying to corral a bunch of lawyers to agree on one final document. So we decided to push forward in the future without having others sign on. But every complaint has been reviewed by a team of lawyers and people who are well regarded within the legal ethics world to review the complaints as well.

0:39:27 Matt: We have a responsibility in Massachusetts. I assume it's probably the same everywhere that lawyers have to report conduct when they see it. So, I means, that seems like what you're doing.

0:39:35 Michael: That's true. I've never seen a lawyer who's been disciplined for not, for misconduct, but it's certainly a requirement. You're supposed to report the misconduct that you witness.

0:39:39 Matt: Of course.

0:39:43 Thomas: Just hats off to those volunteers, especially. I mean, that's saintly work and it's a reminder. I mean we've had a bad taste in our mouths about lawyers around here for a while and it is a really good reminder. There's good people doing good work who are not only willing to put their effort in but willing to donate their time to something that seems like an incredible amount of work. So I just wanted to say like you from a non -lawyer who is happy to see that.

0:40:08 Michael: Yes. They're incredible. We couldn't do the work without them. And we, certainly they deserve accommodation for that as well.

0:40:15 Matt: Accepting ongoing volunteers?

0:40:17 Michael: Do. We've, we've taken down our volunteer form from our website, but people can email if they want to volunteer. Absolutely. Absolutely. We were one overrun and two, we were being targeted. Let's just say, yeah, with

0:40:23 Matt: Great.

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0:42:00 Matt: I want to ask, you know, in the Emil Bove letter, he, and I'm sure you've seen the response to Danielle Sassoon's resignation, or excuse me, Danielle Sassoon's statement that she's going to resign if they proceed with this course of action. He cites a number of times this executive order from Donald Trump about the weaponization of government. And that seems to be what DOJ is proceeding on now. And he cites it as if it's law. He cites it in a very specific kind of way, also cites the Federal Register entry. And I think that a lot of people would say what you're doing is weaponization of government. But it seems to me what you are trying to stop is the weaponization of government when you're going after people that are doing these things that are so fundamentally corrosive to what we're doing. Do you have the thought about that word, weaponization?

0:42:37 Michael: I mean, I think that it, I mean, it's a deliberate attempt to project onto those who are battling for the rule of law, the behaviors of those who were targeting it. There's no way in which holding people accountable for lawless, start with lawless actions on January 6th, could constitute weaponization of the Department of Justice. And is it really feasible to say that those who violated law, who were indicted by citizens, are targeted by weaponization. What is very clear is that they have taken to this term because they are engaging in the behavior themselves and they want to create the cover for their behavior. And that's the concerning aspect of it. But they're, you power now and they will be for the next four years. And the question I think that they ought to ask themselves is whether or not the behaviors that they're engaging in are appropriate responses when they're out of power. And they think that they are, then they should carry forward. But if they don't believe that they should be subjected to the same kind of conduct that they're subjecting others to, then they should call into question whether or not they truly believe that they have been victims of weaponization of government, or if they're engaging in

0:43:46 Michael: It themselves.

0:43:46 Thomas: Yeah, it strikes me that, like, I wish people would have maybe a little more pride in their -- and what they do in the same way that I feel like the Republican Congress -- is just my opinion. But I feel they are consigning themselves to a world in which their job doesn't matter. Like, the job of a MAGA House member? It's to yell and do exactly what one person wants you to do. You make yourself useless. In the same way, this of law that they are taking, that it really is, as long as you can come up with a couple sentences of explanation, and again, not the lure, but we've been doing this podcast a long time, and I am endlessly fascinated by and interested in the subtleties of law and the arguments and analyzing it. It's interesting, and it's a real thing, and it really sucks to almost have the rug pulled out in a way, I don't know if that's the right word, but like it really sucked to see it, this nihilistic approach almost, like it will render lawyers essentially useless if all that matters in this is just an expression of power and just convenience.

0:44:50 Michael: That's exactly right. And, you know, there's, I keep thinking about an article, I mean, not to bore your listeners, but there's a law review article.

0:44:59 Thomas: We're all about it, don't worry.

0:45:00 Michael: I know. I mean, it was probably, gosh, it's got to be almost two decades ago in the Harvard Law Review, and the article's title was Separation of Parties, Not Powers. You know, we're taught about the government being one of separation of powers, where the institutions defend their institutional prerogatives and how that had transformed over time, in which the parties now just protect their interests regardless of where you sit in the government. And so I think that that is a demonstration of what's happening now. Congress, controlled by a Republican Party, is willing to disregard its prerogative, its institutional powers, the most important of which, of course, is the power of the purse to decide how the government spends its money, and delegate it to an executive as long as the executive is within the same party. And that's so problematic because our system is founded on the concept that these institutions will -- that their power is not eroded at the expense and to the benefit of the other and we no longer have that and so we need to really think about what that consequence is for our form of government when a president can decide unilaterally or invite billionaire into the government to

0:46:16 Michael: Decide for him how to spend the money that Congress has appropriately allocated in this, or just simply disregard the law. TikTok is an example of that. And so it's really, we're reaching a moment of crisis and that's one that's overused perhaps, but I think it's meaningful here and it's accurate to say, we need to think about what the consequence will be if we don't have a system that functions in the way that the framers intended and which all other aspects of our government are built upon.

0:47:02 Michael: Yeah. I mean, I think that it's more than we'd like to think, partly because, you becomes a matter of groupthink and expectation. If you want to elevate within the Republican Party right now, it seems like you have to be this extremist person willing to disregard rules and norms to your deity, which I believe right now is Donald Trump. Um, of course, the more that they act without consequence, the more likely it is that others will as well, which is why I think that our project's so important and other accountability projects are important, because even if John Eastman -- he's a bad example because he has felt the consequence -- but even if Bove doesn't feel a consequence to his actions right now if he does in the future or if we let people know that that there will be organizations and other lawyers holding them accountable, then they're less likely to engage in it again. We've tracked the lawyers who we filed bar complaints against after the 2020 election, and there were very few who were participating in efforts in 2024. And well, yes, they could find more lawyers to file lawsuits and bring them. The same actors were not engaging in it for the most part. There were some exceptions, but for the most part, they weren't. And that's because they had been dissuaded. They had understood that what they could do, if they engaged in that, could lead to serious financial consequences for themselves. So we need to hold them accountable. And the more we do that, the less likely it is that we'll face this issue in the future. But I think that there's right now a whole crop of lawyers who believe that they can get away with anything.

0:48:33 Matt: Just seeing the way Emil Bove just put it out there in that memo, you could see it was a quid pro quo. It didn't really require the New York Times to break that. I mean, it was good to get the confirmation and to get it from Danielle Sassoon as well. But I was just reading that and thinking, this is really a point of no return when you put this in writing and publish it. And I don't know, I have to hope that... My thinking, I guess, generally, is if we cannot stop that now, one month into the Trump administration, we're going to have a rough road.

0:48:55 Michael: I think that's right. And I think it comes back to the legal system having to be the ones to stop it. It starts with probably, you know, Judge Ho in New York, and And then it moves on from there and it goes to state bar disciplinary committees and it goes to the legal profession. It goes to judges and ultimately should come back to the Senate and the House as well.

0:49:15 Matt: Donald Trump can't pardon a bar complaint in a bar discipline. So, I mean, it just seems like it's such an effective target.

0:49:20 Michael: Right. And it can't pardon state charges either. I would think that there are potential state charges against Eric Adams. And so, if the federal government is not going to enforce the criminal laws against any elected official who's willing to do the policy work that Donald Trump wants, then the states will need to fill in the gaps. It's a great term, I mean, great in the sense that it's accurate, sad in the sense that it's accurate too, but, you know, hardball. You know, there are, there are state governments, especially in red states, who are willing to engage in such egregious, aggressive policy choices and conduct to aid their -- you know, their preferred outcomes -- to aid their preferred recipients, whether it's Texas suing Media Matters on behalf of Elon Musk, as an example of that. The more progressive, let's call them blue states, are rightfully concerned and hesitant to engage in that. I'm not saying that they should, but you have to at least enforce the laws in your state. And you have to, at least as a bar disciplinary committee, enforce the rules of professional conduct so that when those who are engaging in egregious conduct step past the line, they have consequence. Otherwise, the rules are pointless.

0:50:32 Matt: True. I'm just going to ask how the 65 Project is funded.

0:50:36 Michael: We're funded in a variety of ways.

0:50:37 Thomas: George Soros. No, I don't know.

0:50:40 Michael: Everything is George Soros. Let's put it this way. If George Soros were funding us, I'd drive a much fancier car. At least I would hope so. We have organizations. We have philanthropic organizations that support us. We have a lot of donations from individuals who have supported us. Every time we file a bar complaint, our supporters act in unison and provide us additional support. So we have a variety of sources.

0:51:06 Michael: We have a nimble and trim staff, so we don't have a lot of overhead, which is helpful. So, we can really focus on the work that needs to be done. And they

0:51:12 Thomas: That's excellent. If people want to support, how can they do it? If

0:51:14 Michael: You can go on to the website, which is the65project.com, and there's a donation page there.

0:51:21 Matt: To say, this is really one of the most targeted donations I think you could make to actually making some kind of change right now. It really feels that way.

0:51:27 Thomas: Kidding.

0:51:27 Michael: Well, thank you. And we do need the support. We appreciate the support, and we put the donations to good use, I think.

0:51:36 Matt: Great. Look forward to having you be the villain in many more right -wing documentaries.

0:51:41 Thomas: Yeah, I look forward to watching those. They're so enjoyable.

0:51:45 Matt: Yeah. We really enjoy those around here.

0:51:47 Thomas: No, thank you so much for taking the time and more so for the work you're doing. Just so fantastic to see.

0:51:54 Michael: Well, Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for having me on.

0:51:56 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.