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Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election attorney, has not shied away from standing up to the Trump administration, and has been targeted for retribution this year multiple times as a result.
He’s one of scores of lawyers the Trump administration has named in executive actions, joining a list that includes big law firms and attorneys who worked for people Trump considers his opponents.
There’s no shortage of reasons why Donald Trump would hate Elias and want to shut him down: Elias has for decades represented high-profile Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, and prominent liberal groups, including the Democratic National Committee. He hired the research group that investigated Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016, eventually becoming the Steele dossier. He specializes in election law and won 64 of the 65 cases he worked on in response to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
In one presidential memo, the Trump administration listed “examples of grossly unethical misconduct” by lawyers, singling out Elias for his involvement in the Steele dossier. The law firm Elias used to work for, Perkins Coie, got its own presidential action that cited the dossier. Trump mentioned Elias by name in March at a Department of Justice press conference, calling him a “radical” who was trying to “turn America into a corrupt, communist and third-world country”.
While a long list of big-name law firms have capitulated to Trump’s demands, Elias says his firm was built to withstand the pressure and its important to him to use his platform to fight back, though his outspokenness often comes with pushback.
The presidential memo, which names Elias as an example of an attorney to target, directed the attorney general to “take all appropriate action to refer for disciplinary action” any attorney that violated ethical guidelines and to “review conduct by attorneys or their law firms in litigation against the Federal Government over the last 8 years”.
Elias isn’t aware he’s under investigation, but said he thinks people not taking Trump literally is “one of the great failings” of his time in power.
“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he told the Guardian. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”
He didn’t escape scrutiny during Trump’s first term. He first came on Trump’s radar, to his knowledge, when the president called him the Democrats’ “best Election stealing lawyer” after Elias went to work on a close Senate election in Florida in 2018.
Trump’s second term, though, is like “day and night” from his first, Elias said. The president is now “single-mindedly focused on going after his political opponents” and any walls between Trump and the Department of Justice have crumbled.
“It’s a very different thing when he is not just unleashing the hordes of hate on social media, not just activating the rightwing echo chamber, but is talking to people who are in positions of power to actually do something about his obsessions,” Elias said.
Despite not posting on X anymore – his decision to stop using the platform prompted conspiracy theories from the right – he is far from quiet about his work and his opinions on the Trump administration. He posts often on other platforms, runs a democracy-focused outlet and files lawsuits against the Trump administration on the regular.
“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he said. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”
In response to questions about why the administration has targeted Elias, Davis Ingle, a spokesman for the White House, said Elias “is a crooked hack who was deeply involved in creating a false ‘dossier’ against President Trump on behalf of his crooked client Hillary Clinton, in order to sway the 2016 election in her favor. Marc Elias is a disgraceful swamp creature and President Trump is draining that swamp.”
Elias, Democratic superlawyer
A lifelong Democrat, Elias helped build up election law to what it is today. When he was a young lawyer, it was a rare specialty – election disputes were typically seen as political issues, not legal ones. Now, post-election disputes are almost entirely legal issues.
A 2008 Senate race in Minnesota in which Democrat Al Franken eventually won over Republican Norm Coleman turned the tide. Elias served as Franken’s counsel in what became the longest recount in US history. At the time, some in his party said Franken should concede since Democrats had a strong majority in the Senate and Barack Obama had just won the White House. Elias is always on “team fight”, he said, because “as long as there is a legal fight to be had, we are going to have it.”
Some have opined that his fighting posture can be counterproductive to voting rights, especially with the courts growing more conservative, because the cases can create bad precedent. He has argued for increased coordination between outside political action committees and political parties, a move that Trump capitalized on for his ground game in 2024. In 2023, Joe Biden parted ways with Elias, with sources saying at the time that Biden’s team had frustrations and discomfort with Elias’ hard-charging and big legal bills. That year, he also stopped representing the DNC.
“There was a time where there were people who would say ‘Marc is too quick to litigate, and you can make bad law.’ And I would say then, and I would certainly say now, what are you saving these laws for, if it is not for this moment? … We are in the break-glass moment of American history when it comes to free and fair elections and democracy and so, no, I don’t have any hesitation about litigating everything that we possibly can to protect elections.”
He worked at Perkins Coie until 2021, heading up its political law work and counting a host of big-name Democratic groups and elected officials as his clients. He started his own firm, Elias Law Group, after that, and Democracy Docket, which documents attacks on democracy.
The firm is built to “withstand the pressures of Donald Trump” and only takes on clients from Democratic campaigns, the party itself, associated with Democratic politics or groups advancing voting rights on a nonpartisan basis. It does not take on corporate clients or clients with government contracts. That stance is part of why Elias thinks his firm itself hasn’t been targeted in a Trump executive action. There are fewer ways to pressure him.
Elias was initially surprised at the executive orders targeting law firms because he thought the firms would fight back and win, and Trump would look foolish in the process. He didn’t count on the “cowardice” of firms that instead struck up settlements with Trump, capitulating to his demands by dropping cases and giving massive amounts of pro bono work to conservative causes. The firms that did fight back, including Perkins Coie, have won, but it’s hard to argue Trump didn’t achieve his goals by going after lawyers, he said.
“I think he thought, if I can prevent Big Law from being that role, that’ll make it easier for me to run roughshod over people’s rights. And he’s not wrong about that,” Elias said. “He has actually intimidated a lot of law firms, I think, from taking on causes that they otherwise would have taken on.”
When CBS’ 60 Minutes covered the crackdown on lawyers in May, host Scott Pelley noted that “it was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice.” Elias sat for an interview.
Elias has grappled with whether and how to speak up. Over the years, he’s had threats against him and has at times needed to take extra security precautions. He receives a host of antisemitic commentary, including a writeup years ago in a neo-Nazi publication. He’s often listed as part of the “deep state” despite never working in the government, and called a “globalist”, a frequent antisemitic dog whistle, which he typically dismisses as trolling.
He worries about his family. He worries about the people who work at his law firm every day, and about his clients, who have at times received blowback for their association with him.
“Anyone who tells you that Donald Trump targets them and they don’t care, I think they’re just lying to you,” he said. “I think anyone who says they’re not afraid is either a psychopath or a liar. Of course, you’re afraid. Literally, the president of the United States, who ran for election on a campaign of vengeance and revenge, is talking about you. Of course you’re worried.”
