It’s Time For The Right To Return Fire

Authored by Tom Klingenstein via TomKlingenstein.com,

In this essay, Thomas Klingenstein argues that the Right has made a category error: treating lawfare as a series of discrete legal disputes when it is better understood as a system of political power. His answer isn’t simply better defense, but counterpressure – a new public-interest law firm, led by Jeff Clark, meant to defend conservative lawyers and make lawfare more costly to practice.

The deeper question, however, is whether an adversarial legal order can remain genuinely adversarial when one side commands the institutions, money, and professional machinery of enforcement. Klingenstein’s argument is that formal neutrality is not enough; power also depends on whether institutions exist that are willing and able to contest it.

Lawfare is the strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate, distract, defame, or destroy an opponent. Over the past decade, the Left has built a powerful, well-funded network that is carrying out Lawfare against our advocate class. The Left raised at least $183 million last year.

To examine lawfare, we must consider the current context, which is this: we are at war, a cold civil war, against a domestic regime which wants to overthrow America. It is correct to call it a “war,” and not just an unusually wide divide, because the contest is between two moral orders. From a given moral order there flows a given set of laws, values, customs, and other aspects of culture. Obviously, a society can have only one of each. The moral order of the enemy regime rests on group outcome equality. The moral order of our regime, on the other hand, rests on individual merit. These two moral orders – individual merit versus group quotas – are utterly irreconcilable. You can’t admit people to college (or anything else) based on both merit and group quotas. It’s one or the other. This is why today the two political parties can agree on almost nothing. The Left knows that because it knows that it is at war. Thus, it plays by wartime rules. The Right, on the other hand, does not know it and so continues to play by peacetime rules, which include trying to reach across the aisle, a sucker’s game in a war.

One of the most powerful weapons in the Left’s arsenal is Lawfare. But we on the Right don’t understand this; we don’t understand either the nature or power of the Left’s Lawfare.

It’s time we learn.

The 65 Project is the best example of leftist Lawfare. Devised by Melissa Moss and David Brock, two Democrat operatives with ties to Hillary Clinton, the Project has sought “not only [to] bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame [Right-wing lawyers] and make them toxic.”

Elsewhere, David Brock says the central aim of the Project is to “threat[en] the livelihood[s]” of Republican and conservative lawyers, noting that the power of Lawfare comes from its “deterrent effect.” The goal, Brock underscores, is to “kill the pool of legal talent” on the Right.

The Project’s Advisory Board consists of high-powered Democrat operatives, including former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham, former American Bar Association (ABA) President Roberta Ramo, and Paul Rosenzweig, a member of the Federalist Society who had worked for Ken Starr on Whitewater.

When it was first announced, the 65 Project set out to target 65 lawyers (hence the name), but it has now grown to target 111 lawyers in 26 states and the District of Columbia. Since then, at least 86 bar complaints have been filed. The Project has not won all its cases, but a loss can be just as successful as a “win.” A lawsuit can cost a single defendant hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in legal fees, as well as damage his reputation and even split up his family. Trump’s former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, paid many millions to defend himself against the J6 Committee, Jack Smith, Fani Willis, and likely others.

As I noted, the Left’s lawfare effort raised at least $183.2 million in 2025 alone. This effort is not only well-funded; it is well-organized and coordinated. For example, thousands of people have been mobilized across the country to sign ethics complaints against Right-wing lawyers. In New York alone, 7,200 individuals were mobilized to support the ethics complaint against Rudy Giuliani. The groups are coordinating filings across jurisdictions and pursuing individual lawyers through multiple disciplinary proceedings. Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, and John Eastman have each been disbarred. Jenna Ellis received a three-year suspension. Jeff Clark’s proceeding reached a recommendation for disbarment.

John Eastman’s disbarment is the most well-known shot across the bow. So far, it has cost him $3 million to defend himself against disbarment and Lawfare. And like virtually all our defendants, he could not get legal representation from “white shoe” law firms. Further, his disbarment is just a piece of the Left’s attack: court orders have restricted his travel, his ability to carry a gun, his ability to get his TSA ID renewed, and more – essentially stripping away his rights and imposing as many inconveniences as possible.

If they can disbar Eastman, then they can disbar you. And make no mistake, they want to.

Eastman has appealed the disbarment decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Unfortunately, some of the most prestigious lawyers on the Right would not take Eastman’s case, perhaps because of concerns about financial or reputational consequences. I get it. I know that getting involved would require sacrifices, but I also know our best and brightest lawyers love their country. Let me say to them what they already know: Their country needs them.

Leaving Lawfare to the Left has been a big mistake. It’s time to return fire.

Finally, there is good news. Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice have, to their great credit, stepped up and are now representing John. The Department of Justice should file an amicus brief in support of Eastman. Although the Supreme Court does not normally take state disbarment cases, under its discretionary cert review, it can. The primary justification for taking John’s case is that partisan disbarment undermines the rule of law. Lawyers must not be systematically discouraged from taking difficult and controversial cases, such as ones that defend the Presidency, election integrity, and other Right-wing causes.

Judicial resolution depends on fearless advocates on both sides meeting on an equal playing field. Today, it is not a fair fight. Let’s not sugarcoat it: the proponents of Lawfare on the Left seek to establish a one-party monopoly. And since much of America’s policy development today occurs in the courts, it is evenhanded court advocacy that the Left must destroy.

As I said, we must counterattack. To begin, I’m funding a new, offensive-oriented public interest law firm, which will be led by Jeff Clark. He knows Lawfare from the inside. Jeff had the same concerns about the 2020 election that millions of Americans had: members of the executive branch in many states made unilateral, last-minute changes to properly enacted election laws; the widespread use of mail-in balloting, the lack of signature verification, and a host of other problems. Jeff wanted DOJ and the battleground states to investigate those irregularities aggressively, and so he drafted a letter addressed to Georgia’s legislators that expressed his concerns. The letter was never sent because others at DOJ threatened to resign if it were. The matter should have died, as it was protected by executive, attorney-client, and other privileges. But it didn’t. The letter was leaked by Jeff’s enemies to try to destroy him and pressure him to attack President Trump, which Jeff refused to do.

For this supposed offense – a letter never sent – Jeff was arrested and prosecuted by Fani Willis. And Jack Smith targeted Jeff for years, claiming that he was unindicted co-conspirator number four in a criminal case relating to January 6 in Washington, D.C. What’s more, Jeff had to fend off three separate congressional investigations, and for five years and counting, Jeff has been defending his bar license in D.C. Jeff’s case is so meritorious that the current DOJ sued all of the judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals, two bar quasi-prosecutors, and the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, arguing that they have no authority to prosecute or harass Jeff in any way.

But instead of retreating, Jeff has chosen to fight. He has had a very successful legal career both in private practice and at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the White House. As a leader of the Trump Administration’s DOJ Environment Division, Jeff won 80% of his cases, including stopping the attempted takeover of U.S. energy policy by a federal judge in Oregon. And Jeff won two-thirds of the cases he personally argued when he later took over the 1,000-lawyer Civil Division at DOJ starting in September 2020.

It would be imprudent to reveal our plans to the enemy, but at minimum, the newly minted Project Oversight Law Firm will pursue damages, fees, and other remedies that make the Left’s Lawfare too costly to continue. When necessary, this new firm will bring into question the careers and reputations of those who are committing Lawfare against us. It’s time to turn the tables.

The conservative Lawfare effort has been much less effective than it could have been because it has focused entirely on defending our lawyers who have been attacked by the Left. And even then, our efforts have been woefully inadequate. For the most part, we have left our lawyers to fend for themselves. This must change. We need to meaningfully support our lawyers and, at the same time, go on offense. Playing defense is an honorable task, but as any good strategist knows, the best defense is a good offense.

Furthermore, at present, the conservative public interest movement is hampered by the fact that it is operating like a business that bills its clients at extraordinary hourly rates; instead, we need to develop our own purpose-built law firm (specializing in multiple legal disciplines) that can go on offense. As a movement, we have shown we are capable of identifying what we need to resist, but we are much less clear about what we need to recover, which institutions we need to recapture, and how we aim to eliminate, reduce, or make more expensive future assaults from the Left.