Across battleground states, attorneys who helped former President Donald Trump undermine confidence in the 2020 election results are back at it, filing lawsuits that seed doubt in advance about this year’s outcome.
Some of Trump’s attorneys from the 2020 election cycle were disbarred, indicted, or otherwise sanctioned for their roles, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell. But other lawyers active in Trump’s 2020 efforts, including prominent election conspiracy theorist Cleta Mitchell, have popped up in cases in the key states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. The lawsuits drive a narrative of rampant voting fraud without offering hard evidence to support their claims.
“One of the lessons from 2020 was that the impact of bringing all these lawsuits in terms of public trust in the election was significant,” said legal ethics professor Scott Cummings, who has written about the MAGA legal braintrust’s efforts to keep Trump in power. “Most of the lawsuits then were not designed to win on the merits, but to confuse the public. These cases are of a same piece.”
“It seems like there’s a political calculation,” Cummings said. “These lawyers unfortunately believe it’s worth it.”