The high-profile Democratic lawyer best known for hiring Fusion GPS on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and meeting with British ex-spy Christopher Steele during the 2016 election burst back into public view this week.
Marc Elias, who was also the general counsel for now-Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed presidential bid, is back in the spotlight over his work for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in the neck-and-neck Virginia race.
In a tweet on Thursday, Elias made his involvement in the Virginia election known, touting a “Huge WIN for Virginia Democrats and voters of Virginia” following a federal lawsuit he filed for Virginia Democrats.
“I have represented” McAuliffe “and his campaign since 2015,” Elias, who gained popularity during 2020’s election court battles, tweeted Friday.
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School, criticized McAuliffe for paying Elias and raised suspicions that the Democratic attorney might be preparing to challenge the results of the race against Republican Glenn Youngkin.
It was reported Wednesday that McAuliffe was paying the firm founded by Elias after he left Perkins Coie in August tens of thousands of dollars, and McAuliffe campaign spokeswoman Christina Freundlich responded to questions about whether Elias might assist with challenging the election results, apparently by accident, emailing to a reporter “can we try to kill this” and then “to dispute the challenges of the election.”
After those emails were made public Thursday evening, Freundlich, in an unusual tweet, said, “I think it’s clear based on this story that we did in fact … kill the story.”
“McAuliffe may be preparing to challenge any win by Republican Glenn Youngkin. He has given $53,680 to the Elias Law Group. McAuliffe does not appear disturbed by Elias’ highly controversial career or his possible exposure in the Durham investigation,” Turley wrote Thursday, claiming, “There are a host of election lawyers but McAuliffe selected an attorney accused of lying to the media, advancing rejected conspiracy theories, and currently involved in a major federal investigation that has already led to the indictment of his former partner.”
The grand jury indictment against former Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann centers on a September 2016 meeting between him and then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in which Sussmann passed along allegations claiming there was a secret backchannel between Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
Although special counsel John Durham alleged Sussmann told Baker he was not working for any specific client, the special counsel contends Sussmann was secretly doing the bidding of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign while billing her team for it and working on behalf of technology executive Rodney Joffe. Sussmann pleaded not guilty.
On Thursday, Elias said that “the rightwing troll machine is out in force today.” He pointed to Fox News and Turley.
Elias repeatedly attacked Turley on Twitter and tagged Turley’s law school employer in multiple tweets.
“Imagine working hard, getting into law school and finding out that you are assigned Jonathan Turley as a professor,” Elias tweeted Thursday, adding, “If Turley is upset that my firm and I represent a governor campaign in VA, boy is he going to be upset when he finds out about the hundreds of Senate and House campaigns, Democratic Party orgs and PACs! I continue to live rent free in this dimwitted blowhard’s head rent free.”
Elias played a key role in pushing Trump-Russia allegations during the 2016 election. Steele put his discredited dossier together at the behest of Fusion GPS, funded by Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. Fusion was reportedly paid $50,000 per month from Perkins Coie, and Elias, then the head of the Perkins political law group and Clinton’s campaign counsel, hired Fusion, which paid Steele $168,000.
Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, Robby Mook, said in 2017 that he authorized Elias to hire an outside firm to dig up dirt on Trump’s connections with Russia. He said Elias was receiving information from Fusion GPS or directly from Steele himself about the research into Trump and Russia in 2016, and Elias then periodically briefed the Clinton campaign about the findings.
Elias testified that he was aware of Fusion’s plans to have Steele brief reporters about his anti-Trump research during the 2016 contest. Elias met with Steele during the 2016 contest and periodically briefed the campaign about Fusion GPS’s findings.
The Durham indictment said Sussmann, Joffe, and Elias “coordinated and communicated about the Russian Bank-1 allegations during telephone calls and meetings, which Sussmann billed to the Clinton Campaign” from late July through mid-August 2016.
The indictment states “on or about September 15, 2016, Campaign Lawyer-1 exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations that Sussmann had recently shared with Reporter-1.” Durham wrote that “Campaign Lawyer-1 billed his time for this correspondence” to the Clinton campaign, with the billing entry of “email correspondence with [name of foreign policy advisor], [name of campaign manager], [name of communications director] re: [Russian Bank-1] Article.”
Clinton’s foreign policy adviser was Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser. Her campaign manager was Mook and her communications director was Jennifer Palmieri. “Campaign Lawyer-1” was Elias, who has not been accused of wrongdoing by Durham.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in his December 2019 report that the FBI “concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links.”
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Sullivan told the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 that he was in meetings where Elias briefed the campaign on opposition research. He said some of it was related to the Steele allegations. “Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing. In that context, I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler … in the campaign effort,” Sullivan said.
Steele testified in a British court that Sussmann provided him with other claims about Alfa Bank’s purported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a late July 2016 meeting. These allegations made their way into a mid-September 2016 memo that became part of Steele’s dossier, although Steele repeatedly misspells “Alfa” as “Alpha.” Shortly after writing that memo, Steele met with Elias.
Elias was hit with sanctions in March by Texas federal appeals judges for a “redundant and misleading submission” and for violating his ethical “duty of candor” to the court in a case in which the Democratic Party was fighting against a state law that banned straight-ticket voting. The judges ruled “this inexplicable failure to disclose the earlier denial of their motion violated their duty of candor to the court.”
Elias and other Democratic lawyers were ordered to pay attorneys’ fees and double costs, and the judges recommended Elias and his colleagues to review the section of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct on “Candor Toward the Tribunal” and encouraged them to “complete one hour of Continuing Legal Education in the area of Ethics and Professionalism.”
The sanctions against Elias were upheld in June.
