Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Thursday that the 65 Project, a primarily left-leaning group of lawyers that is trying to intimidate lawyers representing former President Donald Trump in post-2020 election litigation or challenging those election results, “the most un-American group of people I have encountered in all my years of practicing law.”
David Brock, founder of Media Matters for America and a senior adviser to the group, told Axios in March 2022 the group’s method of intimidation 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.”
Such a move could violate the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a right to “assistance of counsel for his defense.” There is a presumption the amendment provides defendants the right to retain counsel of their choice, although it is not absolute. Such intimidation by the 65 Project could thwart that right, according to Dershowitz.
“These are lawyers who ought to be themselves subject to bar association discipline,” Dershowitz, who was part of Trump’s legal team for his first impeachment, told “Carl Higbie FRONTLINE.”
Dershowitz said after he pledged to defend any lawyer pro bono who was targeted by the 65 Project for defending Trump or anyone in his circle, the group filed a complaint with the bar association in Massachusetts, where he lives. He said so far, nothing has come of it.
“I’ve now spoken to three lawyers who were asked to defend either Donald Trump or his co-defendants, and they all are reluctant to do it largely because of Project 65,” Dershowitz said. “This is McCarthyism, the worst form of McCarthyism. It violates the code of professional responsibility. And in numerous ways, it puts the profession in a bad light.”
Dershowitz said every American is at risk when there is a group of “distinguished lawyers, members of the bar, elite members of the bar, members of law firms, people who have held high office in bar associations, essentially threatening lawyers, threatening their careers, threatening their friendships if they continue to represent people this group doesn’t like.”
“It is the worst abuse of the legal profession I’ve seen in 60 years of practicing law, and this is one lawyer who’s fighting back,” he said.
Said Eddie Vale, communications director for the 65 Project, in an email to Newsmax: “Talk is cheap and if Mr. Dershowitz actually believes it he is more than welcome to file a complaint that we would be glad to litigate in addition to ours against him.”
