NY Times editorials chronicle dangers of a second Trump term, including trends that involve "rejecting rule of law," "grifter lawyers," and "neo-Nazis in GOP"

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In a series of editorials, New York Times opinion writers find that a second Trump presidency would put a strain on American democracy and help unleash a number of trends that are more than a little disturbing. 

Spencer Bokat-Lindell, staff editor of the section summarizes the findings in the paper's Opinion Today newsletter. Focusing on The Times' most recent editorial pieces about the 2024 election, with election day set for tomorrow, Bokat-Lindell writes:

On Tuesday, in her last major speech before Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris closed the argument of her campaign against Donald Trump by casting him as a singular threat to American democracy, a “petty tyrant” “consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”

At Times Opinion, we’ve published a wide range of editorials, columns and guest essays that accord with that judgment. But they also complicate it, by placing Trump in the context of broader political forces that he has both harnessed and been harnessed by. After all, the man wouldn’t be much of a threat if he were acting alone.

When Trump was indicted by a Manhattan jury last March, for example, the columnist David French wrote about how Trump’s defenders used apocalyptic language to sow corrosive distrust of the justice system, “priming his supporters to reject the rule of law, root and branch.”

In a guest essay last year, the lawyers George Conway, J. Michael Luttig and Barbara Comstock argued that the conservative legal movement has also been complicit in Trump’s assault on the rule of law. While there were a few lawyers in the Trump administration who refused to participate in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, “more alarming is the growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency,” they wrote. “The actions of these conservative Republican lawyers are increasingly becoming the new normal.”

Another, especially alarming aspect of the new normal, as David Austin Walsh detailed in May, is the growing presence of neo-Nazi and other far-right elements within the Republican Party’s rank-and-file. That month, Trump’s Truth Social account posted a video of mock headlines about his re-election, one of which predicted that “what’s next for America” was the “creation of a unified reich.” The campaign claimed that the video was posted by a staff member, which underscores a problem “that goes far beyond Mr. Trump,” Walsh wrote. “A generation of young Republican staff members appears to be developing terminal white nationalist brain. And they will staff the next Republican administration.”

 These pieces and other coverage we’ve gathered clarify the stakes of tomorrow’s election.

Here at Legal Schnauzer, we will have more in the next two days on The Times' analysis of a possible second Trump term and the danger it poses for our democracy.

Why are these editorials particularly important? Let's briefly review the trends that Bokat-Lindell spotlights -- and we think you will see, without the need for further explanation, why we view the trends as "more than a little disturbing"

1. Sowing distrust of the justice system, priming his supporters to reject the rule of law -- (Note: I started this blog 17 years to spotlight my own distrust of the justice system, which is built on the personal experiences of my wife, Carol [Mrs. Schnauzer] and me in both state and federal courts in two states -- Alabama and Missouri. My research while working on posts for this blog indicates corruption in our nation's courts hardly is limited to those two states -- or to any region, for that matter, although the South and Midwest seem to have particularly ugly brands of courtroom sleaze. We will have much more coming soon on our personal experiences in court -- and many of them involve issues that could upend the lives of many readers. In my view, Trump and his supporters are right to distrust the justice system. But they are wrong to reject the rule of law. We have enough judges who already do that for us. Based on reporting of the facts and law in Trump's various legal entanglements, evidence of his guilt is overwhelming in quite a few of his cases. The problem, of course, is that he can't bring himself to take responsibility for his crimes, even though he recently admitted that he lost the 2020 election -- and he knew he lost it -- but he continues to blame Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and other Democrats for the charges he has faced, even though we have yet to see any evidence that any of those individuals or groups had a thing to do with bringing charges against Trump.)

2. Conservative lawyers have been complicit in Trump's assault on the rule of law, to the point that The Times refers to them as -- "grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency."

3. The growing presence of neo-Nazi and other far-right elements within the Republican Party’s rank-and-file -- This issue alarmed The Times to the point that it included these words in its summary: "A generation of young Republican staff members appears to be developing terminal white nationalist brain. And they will staff the next Republican administration."

Sabrina Haake: Trump invited an enemy to attack NATO allies, and that is treason, driven by Trump's ignorance and his weird bromance with Putin

(Amazon)

 

In part two of our "Trump, Treason, and NATO" series we focus on the work of Sabrina Haake, a political/legal columnist for the Chicago Tribune and a trial attorney with a distinguished record in litigation.

She follows up on the analysis of Harvard University Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, whose work was featured in part one. Haake's take on issues related to Trump and NATO was republished at Daily Kos. Let's take a look: 

Forget Insurrection. Aiding the enemy is treason

By Sabrina Haake

Aleksei Navalny, hero to the free world, has joined the legion of Putin critics who met untimely poisonings, exploding planes and defenestrations from high-floor windows. His tragic death brings into relief a presidential candidate comforting a thug, and suggests Trump enablers have no concept of world history.

In April 1949, the world reeled from unspeakable horrors. An estimated 85 million people perished in WWII: 45 million soldiers smeared across battlefields, 25 million people starved to death and 11 million Jews, gays and other minorities died in Hitler’s maniacal death camps.

Allied forces emerged from the war determined to forge a collective defense for the future. The North Atlantic Treaty established NATO and gave teeth to a free world order governed by the rule of law.

Prized for its armed deterrence, NATO delivered somber recognition that although Hitler was gone, the power-lust, brutality and villainy that drives men like him would forever remain. For NATO signatories still limping from the war, the question wasn’t if Hitler-caliber evil would reappear on the global stage, but when.

Inviting an enemy to attack NATO allies is treason

NATO, sprung from a binding war and peacetime treaty, is more than an aspiration. Under revered and foundational text of the U.S. Constitution, treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate are the supreme law of the land.

For 75 years, America and her European allies have pledged under the treaty that an armed attack against any NATO member would trigger the same military obligations from all NATO members. Under NATO’s article 5, in the event of such an attack, each member state vows to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

Last week, in insult to and derogation of this commitment, an ex-president who tried to stay in power by force publicly encouraged Russia, a present enemy, “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies, to punish them for failure to dedicate 2 percent of their GDP to defense spending.

Since he invaded Ukraine in 2022, Putin has threatened America and NATO with the use of nuclear weapons. Any such attack by Russia at Trump’s behest would trigger NATO’s collective military obligations and activate wartime responses with unfathomable consequences.

Putin is a war criminal and murderous KGB agent. As he brandishes his world-annihilating nuclear arsenal, he is wanted before the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Trump’s suggestion that Putin attack NATO allies wasn’t just stupid. It put America and her allies in real danger, in aid and comfort to a current enemy. It was treason.

An alarmed world reacts to Trump’s ignorance

Trump’s new-level asininity hit the world stage just as the American intelligence community was learning about Russia's potential nuclear capacity to disable American defense space satellites. Trump’s demonstration of ignorance sent shockwaves around the world:

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General: Trump’s comments “undermine all of our security including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: “Any relativization of NATO’s guarantee of assistance is irresponsible and dangerous and is solely in Russia’s interests.”  

Charles Michel, president of the European Council: “Reckless statements on #NATO’s security and Art 5 solidarity serve only Putin’s interest.  They do not bring more security or peace to the world…

Any of these world leaders might have educated Trump, as well as America’s ignorant, that the only time the NATO mutual defense pact has ever been invoked was when European allies came to the aid of the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Our allies went to war for 20 years for us. Receiving NATO benefits for decades then refusing to reciprocate makes us look like an addled bully unfit to lead.  

Trump’s weird Putin bromance

Trump, who continues to argue before the United States Supreme Court that he is above the law, admires dictators. Like Putin, Trump has fought NATO’s anti-dictator objectives for years.

In 2020, according to Politico, Trump told the European Commission President that “if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” adding, “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.” Two years later, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump praised Putin as “a guy who is very savvy.” He said he considered Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “genius.”

Trump, who has secured the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has long fawned over Putin. The admiration appears to be mutual. Despite clear evidence that Russia deployed social media bots to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf, Trump handed Putin “an unalloyed diplomatic triumph” by rejecting the conclusions of America’s own intelligence community, per The Washington Post.

Since then, Putin’s online troll army has not relented. As Thom Hartmann detailed:

Putin uses his internet troll army to convince the GOP base to demand their politicians abandon Ukraine and NATO … Just a few months ago, the U.S. intelligence community released a report to 100 countries letting them know that Russia is attacking democracies by trying to sow dissent and mistrust among their people, largely through social media and sympathetic influencers. The (report advised that) Russia is pursuing operations to degrade public confidence in the integrity of elections themselves. For Russia, the benefits of these operations are twofold: to sow instability within democratic societies, and to portray democratic elections as dysfunctional and the resulting governments as illegitimate.

In seeking to destroy democratic governments, Trump isn’t the only useful idiot at Putin’s disposal. Pro-Russia media propagandists such as Tucker Carlson are also in the game, and it’s working. After the Senate approved $60 billion in bipartisan aid to Ukraine last week,Trump’s Capitol Hill mouthpiece, Speaker Mike Johnson, promised it would not see a vote in the House, and then recessed the chamber for a two-week vacation.

Using defense spending is a ruse

After Trump tried to sic Putin on America’s allies, MAGA tried to justify the unjustifiable, by stressing that 19 of NATO’s 30 members are spending below the target of 2% of their annual GDP on defense.  But this talking point ignores Europe’s nearly $47 billion in financial and budgetary support, humanitarian aid, macro-financial economic aid and emergency assistance to Ukraine to keep its economy afloat as it fights bombs and an outsized army of conscripted Russian convicts.  

Several NATO members are already exceeding NATO’s 2% guideline. Poland spends over 3.9% of its annual GDP, more than the United States. Romania, Hungary, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania,  and Estonia each spend between 2.3 percent and 2.7 percent. All NATO nations had already begun moving toward spending 2 percent after Putin illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Trump had nothing to do with it.

Trump would start WWIII to serve his own ego

Trump has invited Russia, a current enemy, to attack American allies while urging his congressional supporters to aid Russia by turning their backs on Ukraine.

Trump’s ignorance has put American interests at risk. Simply suggesting that the United States will disavow its military obligations instantly weakens our alliances.

Given Trump’s instability, and the national divide he has worked so hard to cultivate, our longtime European partners may in fact be safer by distancing themselves from the United States, emboldening not only Putin’s Russia, but China, Iran, North Korea and terrorist proxies in the Middle East. The damage is done. Whether it can be contained remains to be seen.

My grandfather, Gus Wirthwein, fought in WWII. One of the lucky ones, he got to come home with both legs to his farm in Huntingburg, Indiana. At day’s end he liked to drink beer (Pabst) in front of a campfire and carve walnuts. He’d talk about the crops, the neighbor’s foal, the weather — near anything, except he would never talk about what happened to him during the war.

I only pray that wherever he is, he doesn’t know what Trump has done, and will do to NATO and the free world if given another chance.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing on 1st and 14th amendment defense.  Her  Substack  is free.

Laurence Tribe: Trump's statement to let Putin do "whatever the hell he wants" to NATO allies raises specter of treason via "aid and comfort" to an enemy

(Amazon)

As we reported yesterday, Donald Trump remains vulnerable to treason charges because of his actions and inactions during the Jan. 6, 2001, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That report was based on an analysis by Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard University School of Law. A finding of treason against Trump could mean he is disqualified from ever holding federal office again, and Gersen spells out several ways that could happen. In short, people who are determined to support Trump in tomorrow's election could be throwing their votes away on a candidate who will not be allowed to serve, whose name legally should not be on the ballot.

Since Gersen published her article in 2021, several other legal experts have examined the issue of Trump and treason -- and reached similarly grim conclusions regarding the former president and Republican candidate in tomorrow's 2024 election. In these instances, experts are not focusing on Jan. 6, but rather Trump's statements regarding NATO and U.S. allies. Over the next two days we will be publishing scholarly articles about the latest on Trump and treason.  We start our series, "Trump, Treason, and NATO," now with a piece based on the work of Laurence Tribe, a University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.

A summary of Tribe's work is carried at Raw Story under the headline:

‘Treason’: Top constitutional expert warns of Trump’s attack on NATO

By David Badash 

Donald Trump's remarks that he would not only violate the United States' treaty with NATO by refusing to defend member countries if they were attacked by Russia and had not spent enough on defense, but that he would encourage President Vladimir Putin "to do whatever the hell" he wants in that situation, have sparked fears and warnings in the U.S. and in NATO countries. But one top constitutional scholar is issuing a different kind of warning: treason.

Speaking at a campaign rally in South Carolina, home to his top Republican rival and his own former UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, Trump on Saturday relayed this anecdote to supporters: "One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, 'Well, sir, if we don't pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?' I said, 'You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?' He said, 'Yes, let’s say that happened.' 'No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.'"

Donald Trump's remarks that he would not only violate the United States' treaty with NATO by refusing to defend member countries if they were attacked by Russia and had not spent enough on defense, but that he would encourage President Vladimir Putin "to do whatever the hell" he wants in that situation, have sparked fears and warnings in the U.S. and in NATO countries. But one top constitutional scholar is issuing a different kind of warning: treason.

Laurence Tribe, the well-known constitutional scholar, is University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, co-founder of the American Constitution Society, and author of American Constitutional Law.

Tribe wrote: "This is an announcement by Mr. Trump of intent to commit what Article III defines as 'treason' by giving 'aid and comfort' to an 'enemy,' which Russia would become under Article V of the NATO Treaty by attacking one of our NATO allies."

He was responding to a scathing piece on Trump's remarks in The Atlantic by Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor. and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, and specifically, via X, on this passage: "The leader of one of America’s two major political parties has just signaled to the Kremlin that if elected, he would not only refuse to defend Europe, but he would gladly support Vladimir Putin."

In The Atlantic, Nichols added, "Here in the United States, we have become accustomed to treating Trump like an angry child, ignoring his outbursts the way parents ignore a toddler who shouts threats and claims to hate mommy and daddy during tantrums."

"But other nations do not see an overaged juvenile; they see a man who once held the keys to the U.S. nuclear arsenal and could once again become the commander in chief of the American military. They are watching him because they believe—as they should—that he is telling them exactly what he’ll do if he returns to office."

Trump's remarks drew the ire of NATO itself.

“Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk,' NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement," The Associated Press reported.

Watch Trump's remarks below or at this link.

Trump: One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, Well, sir, if we don't pay and were attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said.. No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. pic.twitter.com/2RPVDFZIXy
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 10, 2024

With an election two days away, questions of treason continue to hang over Donald Trump and could wipe out his ability to hold federal office in the future

Rioters clash with law enforcement on Jan. 6 (Getty)

 

Americans from the left side of the political spectrum have tossed the word "treason" in Donald Trump's direction for several years, with no one in authority willing to prosecute Trump and seek to hold him accountable. That might be because treason is a more complex concept than many of us realize; it's a word that is easy to use but difficult to understand. A legal scholar from Harvard University, however, has written that Trump and his supporters came about as close as you can get to committing actual acts of treason on Jan. 6, 2001. Jeannie Suk Gersen, writing at The New Yorker, makes a compelling case that Jan. 6 involved more than attacks on the U.S. Capitol and acts of violence that proved fatal in some cases.

Gersen is not the only legal expert who has written about Trump and acts of possible treason, and the acts go beyond the insurrection of Jan. 6. Will someone attempt to hold him accountable, with the U.S. election just two days away? Accountability certainly will not come between now and election day, but in that time, we will publish several posts about Trump's ties to actions that might constitute the most serious criminal act one can commit against the United States. And yet, Trump hopes to be elected president, for the second time, of a country he tried to overthrow -- and quite a few Americans tell pollsters they intend to support him. Does that support make sense, especially when you consider that a finding of treason would disqualify him from serving as president, -- and he already is lawfully disqualified as an insurrectionist under the Constitution and will only be on the ballot because the U.S. Supreme Court butchered a case against him in Colorado. (We will be posting about that case in the next couple of days, too.) As to our question -- does support for Trump make sense? -- I will leave that for readers to consider, but I will add that it should give every American pause.

Let's return to Jeannie Suk Gersen, who became the first Asian-American woman to receive tenure at Harvard School of Law in 2010. Under the headline "Did Trump and His Supporters Commit Treason? Few events in American history have matched the Framers’ definition as clearly as the insurrection of January 6th," she writes:

For years, Carlton F. W. Larson, a treason scholar and law professor at the University of California, Davis, has swatted away loose treason accusations by both Donald Trump and his critics. Though the term is popularly used to describe all kinds of political betrayals, the Constitution defines treason as one of two distinct, specific acts: “levying War” against the United States or “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Colluding with Russia, a foreign adversary but not an enemy, is not treason, nor is bribing Ukraine to investigate a political rival. Ordering the military to abandon Kurdish allies in Syria, effectively strengthening ISIS, is not treason, either—though that is getting warmer. During Trump’s Presidency, Larson told me, his colleagues teased him by asking, “Is it treason yet?” He always said no. But the insurrection of January 6th changed his answer, at least with regard to Trump’s followers who attacked the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress’s certification of the election. “It’s very clear that would have been seen as ‘levying war,’ ” he said.

Both of Trump’s impeachments, in 2019 and 2021, were for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but the Constitution also names treason as an offense for which a President can be impeached. Individuals, including a former President, may also be criminally punished for treason, perhaps the highest offense in our legal system, carrying the possibility of the death penalty. Fearing abuse of treason charges, the Framers gave treason a narrow definition and made it extremely difficult to prove.

What makes treason such a tricky topic? Gersen spells it out:

The Treason Clause dictates that a conviction can rest only “on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” Partly as a result, there have been around forty treason prosecutions. No American has been executed for treason against the U.S., although Hipolito Salazar (a Mexican who officials thought was American) was federally executed for treason during the Mexican-American War, and some states have executed people for treason, including the abolitionist John Brown.

Larson wrote in his book On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law, from 2020, that the Framers “had a very specific image in mind—men gathering with guns, forming an army, and marching on the seat of government.” Few events in American history, if any, have matched that description as clearly as the insurrection of January 6th, which, court documents suggest, was planned by militia members who may have intended to capture elected officials. The American most associated with treason was one who did not “levy war” but rather gave “aid and comfort” to the enemy: Benedict Arnold. He at first fought heroically in the Revolutionary War but then attempted to aid the British; he fled to the enemy when his betrayal was discovered, and so was never punished. Treason prosecutions for levying war were brought against some individuals who took part in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, in which armed men burned down a tax collector’s house, and the Fries Rebellion of 1799, in which armed men stormed a prison and forced the release of tax resisters. Both resulted in conviction followed by pardon. The Jefferson Administration prosecuted the former Vice-President Aaron Burr, in 1807, for allegedly conspiring with a group of armed men to overthrow the U.S. government in New Orleans, but he was acquitted. In connection with that planned rebellion, the Supreme Court held that a mere conspiracy to levy war does not count as actually levying war. Another treason case resulted from the Christiana Riot, in which dozens of men fought the return of slaves to their owners as required by the Fugitive Slave Act. Supreme Court Justice Robert Grier, presiding at trial (as Justices did in those days), held that “levying war” had to involve an intent to overthrow the government or hinder the execution of law.

The story of treason in the United States has its roots in the South, Gersen writes:

Southern secessionists who waged war against the United States were treasonous under any reading of the Treason Clause’s “levying war” standard. Jefferson Davis, the former U.S. senator turned President of the Confederacy, was indicted for treason in 1866. Before trial, however, Chief Justice Salmon Chase made clear his view that the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been ratified a few months earlier, precluded any other treason penalties for Confederates. Section 3 of the amendment bars from holding public office anyone who took an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection against” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies” of the United States. Because of the Chief Justice’s interpretation, President Andrew Johnson gave up on the prosecution of Davis and granted amnesty to all former Confederates if they swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the Union.

In the past century, federal treason prosecutions generally have been “aid and comfort” cases. After the Second World War, a Japanese-American woman named Iva Toguri D’Aquino, better known as Tokyo Rose, was convicted of treason for broadcasting anti-American propaganda on Radio Tokyo; she was pardoned in 1977, after witnesses recanted. The poet Ezra Pound was famously prosecuted for Fascist propaganda broadcasts on Italian radio; the case was dropped in 1958, when he was found incompetent to stand trial. During the Cold War, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, not treason; the Soviet Union was not technically an enemy. After a half century of no federal treason cases, the indictment of the Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, in 2006, was the first to concern giving aid and comfort to an enemy that was not a nation. Had Gadahn ever been tried, the defense might have argued that a terrorist group such as Al Qaeda isn’t an enemy as envisioned in the Treason Clause, though a federal district court assumed, in 2013, that it was. Gadahn was killed in Pakistan in 2015, by a C.I.A. drone strike.

Why have the horrific acts of Jan. 6 not attracted much attention from authorities on the grounds of treason? It's not because of a change in the law, Gersen writes, but a change in perception about the law:

Since the Capitol insurrection, there has been little talk of treason charges. Carlton Larson suggested that this was because “everybody now tends to think of treason as mostly aiding foreign enemies.” In his book On Treason, he even states that “levying war is arguably archaic, of interest only to historians,” and that, in the twenty-first century, “armed rebellions to overthrow the government are simply not going to happen.” But, to the Framers, such an insurrection was a paradigmatic case of treason. The founding-era Chief Justice John Marshall held in the treason trial of Aaron Burr that levying war entails “the employment of actual force” by “a warlike assemblage, carrying the appearance of force, and in a situation to practice hostility.” If some of those who attacked the Capitol assembled in order to incapacitate Congress—perhaps even by kidnapping or killing lawmakers—then their actions could be construed as an attempt to overthrow the government, and federal prosecutors could plausibly consider treason charges. As Larson put it, “At some point, you have to say, if that’s not levying war against the United States, then what on earth is?”

Shortly after Jan. 6, Mitch McConnell, who is now the Senate Minority Leader, said that the attackers “tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like,” offering a narrower purpose than government overthrow. Investigators examining the emerging evidence on the scope of the plot might disagree. Federal law also makes it a separate felony for anyone who owes allegiance to the U.S. and knows of the commission of any treason to conceal it or not tell authorities. That vastly widens the net of those who could potentially be charged, including friends, acquaintances, and co-workers of the attackers. (Since the attack, many such individuals have, in fact, come forward to give information to law enforcement.)

Could Trump still be disqualified from holding federal office? The answer is yes, and it might not have to involve a criminal finding of treason. Gersen writes:

The Treason Clause’s strict evidentiary rule of two witnesses to the act makes it exceedingly difficult to convict anyone of treason, even with so much conduct captured on video. But a treason case against Trump himself might conceivably be built, if prosecutors could establish that he knew in advance that his supporters planned to violently assault the Capitol, rather than peacefully protest; that he intended his speech urging them to “fight harder” to spur them to attack Congress imminently; and that he purposely didn’t do anything to stop the insurrection while it was unfolding—or, worse, intentionally contributed to a security failure that led to the breach. Then Trump would have engaged in treason along with supporters who attempted, in his name, to overthrow the U.S. government. At a minimum, it appears that Trump, along with top government officials, was aware that his followers were planning acts of violence. Trump did, however, say, in the midst of his incendiary speech, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Short of treason, a related federal law prohibiting rebellion or insurrection states that a person who incites “any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto,” has committed a serious felony and is disqualified from holding federal office. This description is similar to the current article of impeachment against Trump: “for inciting violence against the Government of the United States.” If two-thirds of senators vote to convict Trump, a majority of the Senate could then vote to bar him from future federal office. But a Senate conviction requires the votes of at least seventeen Republicans and, so far, that looks unlikely. A federal criminal conviction for inciting rebellion or insurrection may offer an alternative route to disqualifying Trump from holding office.

As of January 2024, the government had indicted 1,200 people for crimes related to the insurrection, with 890 people found guilty of federal crimes. The charges include unlawful entry, disorderly conduct, theft, destruction of property, firearms offenses, assault on police, conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, obstruction of justice, and even curfew violations. Ongoing investigations will likely produce more indictments. In addition to potential homicide and terrorism charges, prosecutors have pledged to pursue the charge of “seditious conspiracy.” That crime overlaps with but covers more than treason; federal law defines it as any conspiracy “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States.”

While federal prosecutors could charge some of the leaders of the riot with treason, seditious conspiracy would be far easier to prove. It is clear that the rioters’ goal was, at a minimum, to delay Congress’s legally mandated counting of electoral votes. Prosecutors would need to prove that two or more people had agreed to undertake the seditious conduct, but, with respect to the rioters who were explicit about their aims and coördinated their actions, the evidence may well be sufficient, particularly given the violent result. More evidence might even enable charges against individuals who conspired to attack the Capitol but didn’t take part in the events. Some of those individuals might be elected officials. Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat of New Jersey, has alleged that unnamed members of Congress “had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on January 5th, a reconnaissance for the next day.” Soon afterward, the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Capitol Police opened investigations into what roles members might have played in the siege.

If evidence were to emerge that members of Congress intentionally aided or incited the attack, they may face criminal consequences. It’s more likely, however, that Republicans who amplified Trump’s election-fraud lies will be sanctioned by their colleagues. Seven Democratic senators have filed an ethics complaint against the Republican Senators Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Josh Hawley, of Missouri, who led the effort to overturn the election in Congress. Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat of Missouri, has introduced a House resolution to investigate and potentially expel members of Congress who challenged states’ electoral votes. Bush said, in a tweet, that they “incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election.” Mitch McConnell may agree. He has pointedly acknowledged that the mob was “provoked by the President and other powerful people,” implying that fellow-lawmakers might bear responsibility. But, whatever moral condemnation or political remedy is appropriate, criminal charges cannot be brought against congresspeople such as Hawley and Cruz solely for using a legal process to challenge electoral votes in Congress. It is unlikely that any Republican politician thought they’d succeed in overturning the election, and it may be hard to distinguish their moves in Congress, at least legally, from a few Democrats’ challenges to states’ electoral votes in 2001, 2005, and 2017.

How could Trump still feel the sting of repercussions from Jan. 6. Gersen says it could happen in several ways:

Even if Congress doesn’t censure or expel any of its members, the Senate declines to convict Trump, and federal prosecutors decline to bring charges against any of them, Trump and lawmakers who tried to overturn the election could still be held accountable through Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, the same provision that was intended to prevent former Confederates from holding office. If Trump and the officials tried to run for office again, a lawsuit could claim that they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, and, if the evidence bears it out, some could be disqualified from holding office. But, apart from any of these remotely possible legal remedies, Republicans who helped foment the attack are facing political repercussions: in the weeks since the riot, Hawley has had a fund-raiser and a book contract cancelled, and Missouri’s two biggest newspapers have called for his resignation. But, alas, in our divided country, Republican officials who denounced the insurrection or voted to impeach Trump may also face the ire of many Republican voters.

The past month has required both affirmation of the strength of our democracy and recognition of its fragility. Laws against treason, sedition, rebellion, and insurrection may seem obscure or arcane, but they are on the books for those real instances in which the expression of strong beliefs, which is constitutionally protected, crosses into actions that fundamentally betray and threaten our government. In times of intense division, such actions pose more danger even as their meaning becomes more contestable. The deep split that cracked open during one of the most consequential transfers of power in history—which, as it turned out, was militarized and not exactly “peaceful”—is apparent in the fact that one side’s patriot is the other side’s traitor. Punishments for disloyal acts are a means of insisting on who has legitimate power in our constitutional democracy, and of deterring those who are shown to be trying to destroy it. The legal terms may seem archaic, and sometimes have been misused or abused, but that should not blunt their precise relevance to our unfortunate contemporary situation.

Trump's first term as president was a "rehearsal for fascism," so if elected to a second term, his efforts to seek retribution likely will be even more extreme

(The New Fascism Syllabus)

Donald Trump's first term as president was a test run for an American form of fascism. If Trump is elected to a second term on Tuesday, you can expect Trump to make heightened use of what he calls "extreme power" against an "enemy from within," according to an article at the Guardian from former Bill and Hillary Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal.

Under the headline "We are witnessing the making of a fascist president in real time; Trump used his presidency to harass and prosecute ‘enemies within’. If re-elected, he will act with even less restraint," Blumenthal writes:

"But stupidity is not enough,” wrote George Orwell in 1984. The facts must be eliminated. “Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.” Followers must “forget that one has ever believed the contrary”. Memory must be erased. “This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.” The past, like the facts, must be reinvented. “For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version is the past, and no different past can ever have existed.”

Donald Trump keeps saying that if he is elected to a second term he will prosecute his political opponents, “the enemies within”. On 22 October he stated, once again, that as president he would use “extreme power … We can’t play games with these people. These are people that are dangerous people … an enemy from within.”

At the very moment Trump delivered his remarks highlighting his campaign for a dictatorship, the Atlantic published an article by Jeffrey Goldberg confirming his motive. He reported that Trump, as president, had rebuked the US military command, stating: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”

Then, Trump’s former chief of staff, the former general John Kelly, stepped from behind the curtain in an interview with The New York Times. “Certainly,” he said, “the former president is in the far-right area, he’s an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators – he has said that. So he falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure. He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.” Kelly added, The Times wrote, that “in his opinion, Mr Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”

Will Americans actually elect such a man as president -- for a second time? Blumenthal seems to see it as a distinct possibility, even though warnings about the dangers Trump presents did not end with John Kelly. Fellow generals Mark Milley and James Mattis quickly backed him up. That leads to this question: If three distinguished and highly respected military leaders warn that Trump essentially is a dictator-in-waiting, why do polls tell us that his race with Kamala Harris remains close. Harris -- a former Los Angeles district attorney, a former U.S. attorney in California, a former U.S. Senator, and a vice president -- has the kind of solid record that suggests she would be at least a competent president, perhaps a very good one. That puts her several steps up on Trump. Remember, Kelly said Trump "had no understanding of the Constitution . . . or the rule of law. Do Americans really want a president who has no idea how to govern? They think that's a good thing? If so, they had better come to their senses quickly. Blumenthal writes:

The warning of the generals against Trump’s fascism is unanimous among those who have served most closely with him. The former chair of the joint chiefs, the retired general Mark Milley, told Bob Woodward, in his new book War, that Trump was “fascist to the core”. Trump’s secretary of defense, the former general James Mattis, emailed Woodward to express his agreement with Milley that Trump was “the most dangerous person ever”, and “Let’s make sure we don’t try to downplay the threat, because the threat is high.” It’s Defcon 1.

In a case of exquisitely poor timing, two days before the latest revelations of Trump’s despotic intent and his own insistent bellicose demands for absolute power to use against his “enemies”, the Wall Street Journal editorial board assured its readers that Trump doesn’t mean it. There is no reason to take him seriously. In any case “the public isn’t buying this Democratic claim about Trump”. The “fascist meme” is just partisan propaganda. “The answer is that most Americans simply don’t believe the fascist meme, and for good reasons. The first is the evidence of Mr Trump’s first term. Whatever his intentions, the former President was hemmed in by American checks and balances.” Not satisfied with absurdly dismissing Trump’s unapologetic statement, the Wall Street Journal felt compelled to airbrush the present and the past in the Orwellian tradition of “doublethink”. Within 48 hours, however, its dismissal of the supposedly “Democratic claim” about “the fascist meme” was swept away by Kelly. Having discarded Milley’s and Mattis’s earlier statements, the Journal must have figured it could deposit Kelly’s as well in the burn bag for facts in order to be able to embroider its sophistry. But, at least for the moment, creating doublethink is a demanding job. An essential element in the normalization of Trump and his fascism is the erasure of his crimes and transgressions when he was president – his “first term”, as the Journal disingenuously describes it, as though he’s already elected to his second. Conjuring up an air of inevitability is another demoralizing Newspeak tactic. Trump’s threats, when they are not dismissed as mere rhetoric, are too generally reported as if they are something new, that they exist solely in the vacuum of this campaign, and that he has no past. Trump’s history is consigned to the memory hole.

Trump, of course, does have a history, and much of it is troubling. Blumenthal provides convincing evidence that Trump's history largely was a "rehearsal for fascism." He writes:

Trump’s presidency was a rehearsal for fascism. Quite apart from his record of kleptocracy, allegedly pervasive corruption and obstructions of justice, pardons of criminal associates and dangling of pardons to insure their silence, contempt for the law, maniacal obsession with Hitler, who “did some good things”, scorn for military service (“suckers” and “losers”), worship of foreign tyrants, congenital lying, paranoid conspiracy mongering, disdain for climate science, willful neglect of public health, ignoring warnings and spreading falsehoods in the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands, the organization and incitement of the January 6 insurrection, and indifference to the near-assassination of his vice-president by a mob he had unleashed (“So what?”), Trump systematically abused the Department of Justice to investigate, harass and prosecute his “enemies within”. Trump’s current rage is hardly a new threat. In a second term he intends to smash through the constraints that inhibited him in his first.

The Just Security website of the New York University School of Law reports: “The cascade of election coverage, commentary and speculation about how Donald Trump might use the power of the presidency to retaliate against his perceived political enemies has overlooked important context: Trump has done just that, while he was president.” Just Security distilled “A Dozen Times Trump Pushed to Prosecute His Perceived Enemies”, but there were many more.

“The saddest thing is that because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the justice department,” Trump said on 2 November 2017. “I am not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated.” How did Trump function within the constraints of the presidency. Blementhal compares his behavior to that of a burglar. Trump’s years in office showed him on a learning curve of fascism. He saw democracy as a plot against him that he had to break down. Like a hotel burglar jimmying door locks, through trial and error he discovered how to turn the keys. He pushed and prodded looking for weaknesses and loopholes. He located the places where he encountered resistance. He felt for the limits and how to go beyond them. He found out who would deter him and who would enable him. He calculated the price of everyone. He discovered those whose craven ambition would serve him. He realized that ideology was a tool he could use like a crowbar. He absorbed the lessons of crime and punishment in order to commit greater crimes without punishment. His administration was a school for the making of a fascist.

Trump was frustrated that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself so that he could not kill the former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign connections to the Russians. The Mueller report stated: “According to Sessions, the President asked him to reverse his recusal so that Sessions could direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton …”

After publicly attacking the justice department for not investigating “Crooked Hillary”, Trump succeeded in intimidating Sessions into naming a special counsel to investigate the already debunked conspiracy theory that Uranium One, a Canadian company, made a deal with the Russians in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. A grand jury was empaneled, issued subpoenas and prosecutors concluded there was no “there” there. But it was not until two years later that the case was closed without any charges on 15 January 2021, five days before Trump left office.

Trump's paranoia was so powerful that he seemed to be looking for enemies behind every office plant. Blumenthal writes:

On 8 November, he forced Sessions to resign. The new attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, a compliant mid-level right-wing operative from Iowa, was a stand-in until William Barr took over in February 2019.

Barr, who had been attorney general under George HW Bush, was advertised as a conservative Republican institutionalist. He knew how to game the system in the interest of his own game. The cultural reactionary, on the board of the reactionary Opus Dei organization’s Washington DC front, the Catholic Information Center, believed he was using the depraved Trump in a crusade for the restoration of traditional morality. More importantly, Trump was the useful idiot to stock the federal bench with Federalist Society-stamped judges. Leonard Leo, chair of the Federalist Society, served on the Opus Dei group’s board with Barr.

Barr wound up filling many roles in the Trump years, with several of them seeming to involve dubious activities. The term "cover-up" will forever be attached to his name. Blumenthal writes:

Barr was the adult in the room who became Trump’s enabler, enforcer and teacher. On 24 March 2019, Barr issued a letter pre-empting the release of the full Mueller report so that he could to distort its conclusions and present those distortions as truthful. He wrote that Trump’s campaign had not “conspired or coordinated” with the Russians, that Trump had fully cooperated with the investigation and that Trump had not committed obstruction of justice. He redacted and withheld from the public key sections of the report. “Mueller’s core premise – that the President acts ‘corruptly’ if he attempts to influence a proceeding in which his own conduct is being scrutinized – is untenable,” Barr wrote to justify his cover-up.

The US House of Representatives held Barr in contempt for withholding the full report. It revealed that Trump had committed 10 indictable obstructions of justice to keep evidence and witnesses from investigators, which neither Barr nor his Biden-appointed successor, Merrick Garland, ever prosecuted. The report identified 272 contacts between Trump agents and Russian operatives, not one of which Trump reported to the FBI. Judge Walton ruled that Barr had “distorted” and been “misleading” about the contents of the report. On 30 September 2020, he decided Barr had violated federal law and that the redacted sections should be released, which they were, only days before the 2020 election. But Barr was not about to open a prosecution of himself.

The bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, released on 18 August 2020, disclosed literally hundreds of instances of Trump campaign involvement with Russian operations. Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, regularly shared “sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy” with a Russian intelligence officer, Konstantin Kilimnik, with whom he had a long relationship on behalf of Russian interests in Ukraine.

One of Trump’s obstructions, cited by Mueller, was his dangling of pardons for Manafort, who was convicted of numerous tax and financial frauds, and for Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser convicted for lying to the FBI and not registering as a foreign agent. Trump was enticing them not to testify. Both stonewalled, and both received pardons.

After Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime dirty trickster, was convicted of lying to the Congress and obstructing justice about acting as a conduit for Russian intelligence through WikiLeaks on hacked Clinton campaign documents, among other murky things, and sentenced to nine years in prison, Trump expressed outrage: “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them.” Barr instantly intervened to reduce the sentence. The four prosecutors on the case resigned in protest.

For two years, Barr waged a war against Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, a Republican, who indicted Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen on campaign finance charges for paying hush money to the adult film star Stormy Daniels to silence her about a sexual relationship with Trump. Trump clearly appeared in the indictment as Unindicted Co-Conspirator No 1. Barr pressured Berman to reopen the case in order to toss it out. Berman refused.

Barr then tried to strong-arm Berman at Trump’s instigation into indicting the former secretary of state John Kerry for trying to keep alive the Iran nuclear deal he negotiated during the Obama administration. Berman refused. Barr pushed Berman to indict Greg Craig, Obama’s former legal counsel, on flimsy charges of not registering as a foreign agent, in order to have a prominent Democrat’s scalp. Barr sent a deputy to tell Berman he should prosecute Craig to “even things out” before the election. Again, Berman refused.

Barr moved the Craig case to the District of Columbia, where he leveraged an indictment. On 4 September 2019, the jury acquitted Craig in less than five hours. “Throughout my tenure as US attorney,” Berman wrote in a memoir, “Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining – in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired. I walked this tightrope for two and a half years. Eventually, the rope snapped.”

After Trump lost the election of 2020, Barr was on board with Trump’s claim it was stolen, sending a memo to DoJ prosecutors to investigate “vote tabulation irregularities”. Sixteen assistant US attorneys resigned in protest. Later, Barr acknowledged, of Trump’s assertion that the election was fixed: “It was all bullshit.” On 14 December 2020, Trump attempted to get Barr’s involvement in the fake electors scheme. Barr declined to be ensnared in an obviously illegal act in a losing cause. He saved himself from becoming incriminated and resigned.

Trump had already got whatever he wanted from Barr up to the last minute, when Barr’s instinct for personal self-preservation asserted itself. On the eve of 6 January, Barr relinquished the Tom Hagen role for his godfather. Trump was done with the disloyal consigliere. He turned to other helpers.

After the January 6 insurrection, Barr accused Trump of a “betrayal of his office”. “All of a sudden, Bill Barr changed. You hadn’t noticed,” Trump remarked. Yet this past April, Barr endorsed Trump for re-election, explaining that “the threat to freedom and democracy has always been on the left.” Trump sneered: “Wow! Former AG Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country, has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him ‘Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy’. Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement. Thank you, Bill.

The conservative majority on the US supreme court, three of whose members Trump appointed, rescued him from facing trial for January 6 before the 2024 election. Taking up Trump’s appeal, the court languidly spent months to render an opinion bestowing on him and future presidents absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts”. In its ruling, with a sharp understanding of Trump’s methods, the court stated that a president could order a sham investigation of his political enemies, if he wished, without any restraint or accountability.

The decision was explicit in granting free license to political prosecutions: “The indictment’s allegations that the requested investigations were shams or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials. Because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” The court has ruled: Trump’s past efforts to stage “sham” show trials of his “enemies” and launch a coup involving the DoJ are above the law. His future dictatorship in which he could exact retribution from his “enemies within”, deploying the DoJ, has received advance approval.

The supreme court’s immunity decision justifying Trump despotism, presented by Chief Justice John Roberts, was better explained in the twisted language of an apparatchik from the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984:

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

On 24 October of this month, Trump boasted about the unlimited power that he would possess once he is back in the White House. Speaking to the right-wing radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt, he declared that he would at the start fire the special prosecutor Jack Smith, who has indicted him for his crimes of January 6 and stealing national security secrets. “We got immunity at the supreme court,” Trump said. “It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds.” Trump would then have 86,398 seconds left to be a dictator on “day one”.

As Republicans gear up for post-election warfare -- and possible use of dubious tactics -- a watchdog group warns, "Don't lose your law license because of Trump"

 

(Texas Lawyer)

Conservative lawyers are being warned that they could face serious consequences in their professional lives if they help Donald Trump try to subvert the 2024 presidential election, according to a report at AlterNet. Under the headline "Why conservative lawyers 'cannot defensibly assist' Trump in efforts to subvert election: legal expert," Maya Boddie writes:

With less than [a week] until the presidential election, Donald Trump is expected to take legal action in  case he's defeated by Kamala Harris — as he did [against Joe Biden] in 2020.

In an op-ed published recently by The New York Times ["Lawyers Should Not Assist Trump in a Potential Power Grab"], University of Pennsylvania law professor Kate Shaw submits that although Trump and his allies' "efforts failed spectacularly" in courts across the country, the former president "will most likely be, if anything, more determined to win at all costs — driven not only by desire for power but also by fear of what might come of the pending legal cases against him."

The MAGA hopeful "has a right to competent and effective counsel, and it is important that he be well represented," Shaw writes. "But the right to counsel guaranteed by our Constitution does not extend to efforts to subvert that very document."

Do lawyers understand that Trump poses a threat to their careers? To make sure, Shaw drives that point home, as Boddie writes:

Furthermore, Shaw emphasizes that many lawyers are well aware of the impact representing Trump could have on their reputations.

"Lawyers cannot, consistent with their ethical obligations, participate in devising litigation that is retrofitted to support the position Mr. Trump seems to hold — that the only 'real' Americans are those who cast their ballots for him and that those who vote against him are by definition engaging in fraud," the law professor writes.

"Attorneys at prominent law firms should already know that they cannot defensibly assist in Mr. Trump’s specious efforts," Shaw adds, noting that, "If they waver, their corporate clients should make clear they do not want their attorneys associating with a candidate who has already told us 

Furthermore, Shaw emphasizes that many lawyers are well aware of the impact representing Trump could have on their reputations.

"Lawyers cannot, consistent with their ethical obligations, participate in devising litigation that is retrofitted to support the position Mr. Trump seems to hold — that the only 'real' Americans are those who cast their ballots for him and that those who vote against him are by definition engaging in fraud," the law professor writes.

"Attorneys at prominent law firms should already know that they cannot defensibly assist in Mr. Trump’s specious efforts," Shaw adds, noting that, "If they waver, their corporate clients should make clear they do not want their attorneys associating with a candidate who has already told us he will not respect the will of the voters if they do not choose him." 

Warnings about Trump are not just coming from academia. This is from a Times article under the headline "Legal Watchdog Group Warns Pro-Trump Lawyers Against Subverting Democracy in November; New ads running in legal journals are warning lawyers: “Don’t lose your law license because of Trump.”

Alan Feuer is a reporter covering extremism and political violence for The New York Times. He has been writing about crime and criminal justice for The Times since 1999, covering cases involving the Mafia, Mexican drug cartels, murders and corrupt police officers and politicians. Regarding Trump and any lawyers who might try to assist him with underhanded election tactics, Feuer writes:

After the 2020 election, legal watchdogs, outraged at some of their colleagues, filed scores of ethics complaints against lawyers who used their skills in questionable ways to help former President Donald J. Trump stay in power.

And in the past few years, the groups have had some notable successes, securing judgments that have led to pro-Trump lawyers like John Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani having their law licenses deactivated.

Now, one of these groups — the 65 Project — is taking a more proactive approach. The group’s organizers are running advertisements in legal journals published in swing states, reminding lawyers that they are ethically barred from bringing false claims on behalf of any client.

“Don’t risk your law license by joining an effort to subvert democracy,” one of the ads says. “We — and the public — are watching.”

The ads, initially set to appear in both print and online in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, will be coming out just as Republicans and Democrats alike are gearing up for what could be an exceptionally bitter legal fight over the election.

Democrats are expecting an aggressive Republican effort to challenge voters, rules and, possibly, the results of the race. In preparation, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has assembled an expansive legal team of hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers meant to be a bulwark against multiple certification battles and mass voter challenges.

Michael Teter, the managing director of the 65 Project, said he hoped the group’s ads would have a “deterrent effect” on any lawyers who might be inclined to take part in such efforts in a way that violated legal codes of ethics.

“Lawyers should know they’re risking their law licenses if they try to overturn free and fair elections,” he said.

A small army of lawyers went to work for Mr. Trump four years ago, helping him to launch an increasingly dubious series of attempts to overturn his defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Some filed lawsuits of questionable merit that claimed the race had been marred by widespread fraud or had been rigged by a conspiracy of plotters that included voting machine companies, the Chinese Community Party and George Soros, a Democratic financier.

Others mapped out plans to create slates of electors that falsely claimed Mr. Trump had won the race in states that were actually won by Mr. Biden. The plan was intended to culminate on Jan. 6, 2021, when Mr. Trump wanted his own vice president, Mike Pence, to use the fake electors as a pretense to delay the certification of the election or to throw the race his way at a proceeding at the Capitol that day.

Some pro-Trump lawyers, like Sidney Powell, were sanctioned by judges for filing lawsuits advancing a conspiracy theory that voting machines built by Dominion Voting Systems had been used to rig the election against Mr. Trump. Jenna Ellis, who was part of a team of lawyers who presented his fraud claims at legislative hearings in swing states, settled a disciplinary measure against her by publicly admitting that she had knowingly misrepresented the facts when she claimed that widespread voting fraud had led to Mr. Trump’s defeat.

The 65 Project takes its name from its tally of 65 lawsuits pro-Trump lawyers filed to try to overturn the 2020 results. It describes itself as a bipartisan group and receives funding from large grant-making foundations, Mr. Teter said. Its advisory board includes a former chief justice of the Utah Supreme Court, Christine Durham, and Paul Rosenzweig, a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security.

The group’s advertisements seek to capitalize on the penalties that pro-Trump lawyers faced for their work after the last presidential election. One of the ads bluntly states the potential consequences.

“Don’t lose your law license because of Trump,” it says.

For taking part in efforts like this, many pro-Trump lawyers have paid a steep price.

Mr. Eastman and Mr. Giuliani, for example, were not only barred from practicing law because of the work they did for Mr. Trump in 2020. They were also both indicted in separate criminal cases in Georgia and Arizona where they stand accused of conspiring with the former president to overturn the results of the race. They have both pleaded not guilty and Mr. Eastman is fighting the deactivation of his law license.