Another Trump Attorney Harassed As Election Challenges Move Through Courts

Another Trump Attorney Harassed As Election Challenges Move
Through Courts 1

Another Trump Attorney Harassed As Election Challenges Move Through
Courts Tyler
Durden
Mon, 11/16/2020 – 12:00

Days after a law firm representing the Trump campaign
withdrew from the case
following a pressure campaign from the
anti-Trump Lincoln Project to ‘cancel’ them, another Trump
attorney says she’s being harassed
for her involvement in
the case.


Philadelphia attorney Linda Kerns said in a late Sunday
court filing
that an attorney with law firm Kirkland &
Ellis in Washington left her a one-minute voice mail that
“falls afoul of the standards of professional conduct.”
Of
note, Kirkland & Ellis represents PA Secretary of State Kathy
Boockvar, a defendant in the case.

“Since this case was filed, undersigned counsel has been
subjected to continuous harassment in the form of abuse
e-mails, phone calls, physical and economic threats, and even
accusations of treason
– all for representing the
President of the United States’ campaign…” wrote Kerns in her
filing.

“On November 14, 2020 at 8:43 a.m., an attorney at Kirkland
& Ellis left a one-minute voicemail for undersigned counsel.
The voicemail … speaks for itself and by any measure falls afoul
of standards of professional conduct.”

Kirkland & Ellis’s attorney in the case initially
tried to suggest it wasn’t one of their employees
who made
the call – before eventually admitting it was. They then ‘excused
the conduct by saying the lawyer (who works in the same office)
does not work on this case or in litigation,’ though agreed that
the call was ‘discourteous.’

As constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley writes at

JonathanTurley.org
regarding the effort to ‘cancel’ Trump’s
lawyers
(emphasis ours):

Within 24 hours of the election being called, the media and an
array of legal analysts declared no evidence of voter fraud to
change the outcome. The problem was that we had not even seen the
Trump campaign’s filings or evidence. As Trump lawyers began to
file cases, alleging everything from deceased voters to biased
authentication, the solution became clear: Get rid of the
lawyers. No lawyers, no cases, no Trump.

What is most unsettling is that this effort is led or
cheered on by lawyers
. Take�Washington Post columnist
Randall Eliason, who gained notoriety supporting an array of
theories on impeachment or criminal claims against Trump, including
a bribery interpretation long rejected by the Supreme Court and not
adopted even by the impeachment-eager House Judiciary Committee.
Eliason wrote a column, “Yes,
going after Trump’s law firms is fair game
.â€
(Everything seems fair game if the ultimate target is
Trump.
) Eliason shrugged off the notion that attacking a
person’s lawyers, rather than his positions, is beyond the pale:
“Law is a profession, but these mega-law firms are also big
businesses. Like any business, they can be held accountable by the
public — and by their other customers.â€

The law is not like any other business, however. Lawyers
speak for others, including some of the least popular among
us
. I have represented clients ranging from judges,
members of Congress and whistleblowers to spies, terrorists and
polygamists. Many were hated by the public, who demanded that I be
fired from my law school — but I have never seen such a campaign
led by lawyers against lawyers.

Our legal system works best when competent lawyers present cases
to dispassionate judges. In this case, some 72 million
Americans voted for Trump, and many believe changes in the process
— particularly the massive increase of mail-in voting —
undermined the election’s integrity
. That is why these
cases are important: Faith in our legal and political systems
depends on fair access to and representation in the courts.

As in the past, there is a disturbing symbiosis of the media and
activists feeding off each other. When Biden was viewed as
the likely winner, theories of voting irregularities instantly
became “conspiracy theories.â€
Groups like the Lincoln
Project targeted law firms and launched a campaign to force lawyers
to abandon Trump as a client.

This effort resulted in Twitter blocking the Lincoln Project for
targeting individual Trump lawyers in a tweet (accompanied by a
skull-and-crossbones emoji) that was deemed threatening and
abusive. That only seemed to thrill the Lincoln Project. It
reportedly joined Democrats in targeting law firms like Porter,
Wright, Morris & Arthur and threatening its lawyers with
professional ruin. It claimed that any firm working for Trump on
election litigation was part of a “dangerous attack on our
democracy.†Trying to strip people of their counsel, of course,
is the real attack on our democracy — and it worked: The firm
buckled and withdrew, saying the pressure caused internal struggles
and at least one lawyer’s resignation.

Other campaigns have targeted individual lawyers
and what used to be called “fellow travelers†during the
McCarthy period
. After the election, Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called for liberals to assemble enemies
lists of those “complicit†in the Trump administration.
(Ironically, the first entry by a Bernie Sanders surrogate
were the
Republicans who founded the Lincoln Project
). Former
Obama spokesman Hari
Sevugan proudly tweeted
: “WH staff are starting to look for
jobs. Employers considering them should know there are consequences
for hiring anyone who helped Trump attack American
values.
â€

However, the effort to intimidate lawyers representing Trump or
his campaign is not about vengeance. It is about insurance. Even
though the success of these challenges is small and shrinking,
opponents do not want to risk any judicial scrutiny of the vote.
Social media campaigns targeted the clients of firms like Jones
Day, while the Lincoln Project pledged $500,000 to make the lives
of these lawyers a living hell. It is the kind of tactic
used by Antifa and other activists to “deplatformâ€

speakers or harass individuals at their homes.

Trump is highly unpopular with many Americans — and virtually
all of the media — so it is popular to harass anyone who supports
or represents him. It is mob justice targeting the justice
system itself. Yet, lawyers like Eliason are applauding the
effort
.

Eliason justifies such harassment by saying the Trump campaign
and Republican groups “have filed lawsuits that appear to contain
baseless allegations of fraud and that seek to have lawful votes
rejected.†Note the word “appear.†Eliason did not know when
he wrote the column because he has not seen the evidence. Neither
have I. We only began to see underlying evidence (or the lack
thereof) this week as courts held hearings into pending motions.
It is the difference between wanting something to be true
and knowing something to be true
. That is generally what
courts determine.

Yet, there is little patience for discussing, let alone
litigating, these legal issues. On Friday, I discussed these
challenges, including a Michigan district where thousands of Trump
votes were initially tallied as Biden votes; the district used the
same voting software that has been the subject of much national
debate. While I explained that the mistaken tally resulted from
human error and “nothing nefarious,†the question remains
whether such new systems or software might be vulnerable to human
errors. Despite my stating there was no evidence of systemic
problems, Colorado Law Professor
Paul Campos
 denounced me as
akin to a “Holocaust denier†who should be fired. 

Notably, the person most undermined by these efforts is
Joe Biden
. Rather than call for a transparent review of
these cases to affirm his legitimacy as president-elect, his
supporters are harassing lawyers and running a hysterical campaign
of retaliation. It is an ironic twist: For years, many of us
marveled at how guilty Trump looked in his efforts to bully
accusers and scuttle the Russia investigation. The best thing for
Trump would have been to support a full, open investigation.
Likewise, there is no compelling evidence of systemic election
fraud now, and the best thing for Biden would be to support a full,
open investigation. Threats and biased media coverage only deepen
the suspicions of Trump voters.

There is an alternative. We can all agree that every vote should
be counted and every voting case be heard. Our political and legal
systems both require a leap of faith — and this crisis of faith
has now moved from the political to the legal system.
Courts are supposed to be where reason transcends the rage
that reigns outside the courthouse. However, it still requires
lawyers
.

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