Leftist "dark money" lawyer Marc Elias' problems are piling up. As The Washington Free Beacon reported, a federal judge reprimanded Elias last week for bringing a frivolous suit defending New York's redistricting maps:
It's not every day that a federal judge calls a lawsuit from one of the country's top lawyers a nasty and partisan "Hail Mary pass" intended to undermine free and fair elections. But that's what happened on Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, tossed out a lawsuit brought by Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias.
"In the 102 years since my father, then a Ukrainian refugee, came into this country, if there were two things that he drilled into my head, they were … free, open, rational elections [and] respect for the courts. The relief that I'm being asked to give today impinges, to some degree, on the public perception of both," Kaplan said of the lawsuit, which sought to preserve redistricting lines in New York state that a court had already ruled unconstitutional. "And I'm not going to do that."
Elias is also involved in the scheme which led to the Steele Dossier, now subject to an investigation by Special Counsel John Durham. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal published an extensive account of how the Steele Dossier was created including the involvement of Elias' former firm, Perkins Coie:
Mr. Danchenko’s work for Mr. Steele, which had mostly involved business intelligence, also took a turn toward politics. Mr. Steele, a former agent in Russia for the British intelligence agency MI-6, asked Mr. Danchenko to work on a new assignment Mr. Steele had accepted: to look for compromising material on Mr. Trump in Russia.
The assignment came from Fusion GPS, a Washington firm that does investigations for private clients. Republicans opposed to Mr. Trump’s bid for the GOP nomination initially hired Fusion, but by this time it was employed by Perkins Coie, a law firm representing Mrs. Clinton’s primary campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
They literally just made it up. And everyone in the media bought it. https://t.co/A8apzRsp0Z
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) May 10, 2022
A recent report from the Washington Examiner adds:
[Fusion GPS co-founders] Simpson and Fritsch wrote in their 2019 book that they met with Elias on April 20, 2016, and Elias wanted "deep research on Trump.”
Fritsch told Elias, “We think you guys will really want to pay attention to the Russia angle.” Fusion wrote that “it was obvious from Elias’s reaction that the Russia element was new to him.”
“This angle was all new to Elias, and he loved it,” Fusion said, adding: "Fusion’s research team would soon be hired and given wide latitude.”
Fusion wrote, “Elias said Fusion would be reporting only to him" because "if Fusion’s communications were with a lawyer, they could be considered privileged and kept confidential.”
The special counsel said the “primary purpose” of Fusion’s work related to the Steele dossier and Alfa-Bank claims “was to assemble and publicize allegations that would aid the campaign’s public relations goals.
After all of these antics, even liberals like Professor Rick Hasen are calling him out.
This was not just a procedural loss. The panel said it is highly unlikely that the district court's finding of Florida's intentional racial discrimination in voting---and the preclearance requirement that depends on that finding--will stand. https://t.co/kKZiEHIXXr https://t.co/zjQdSM85qo
— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) May 6, 2022
And it isn't the first time Hasen has criticized Elias for twisting facts.
Elias is trying to spin his many problems positively, but the reality is that he is in trouble with the courts, the law, and even his old allies.