(Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s team has reportedly cut ties with Democrat lawyer Marc Elias, with sources close to the White House accusing Elias of “grandstanding.”
Elias’s laawfare work has been instrumental in helping Democrat candidates and campaigns. His firm, Elias Law Group, is already working on behalf of various Democrat House and Senate committees ahead of the 2024 election and has received payments from campaigns affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga. Elias also represented the Democratic National Committee until recently.
However, tensions have developed between Elias and Biden’s head personal attorney, Bob Bauer, according to Axios. Sources said the White House became frustrated with Elias’s legal tactics, especially since he refused to consult Biden’s team about them first. Often, the White House would learn about his various voting rights lawsuits from MSNBC or social media, the sources said.
“It is ultimately our clients’ decision if and when to provide notice of a lawsuit to others,” a spokesperson for Elias’s law firm told Axios.
Bauer is also reportedly concerned that Elias’s approach will “backfire with the current conservative makeup of the judiciary.”
Though the sources didn’t cite the scandal directly, Elias’s role in the Russia collusion hoax could be a part of this concern, which he orchestrated, hiring the firm Fusion GPS on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. Fusion GPS then brought on British ex-spy Christoper Steele, who produced the debunked Steele dossier, which accused former President Donald Trump of colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
Elias has also fallen out of favor with the DNC, which he had represented since 2009.
“Marc was the DNC’s counsel and he was consistently giving them and the president’s team the middle finger,” one source said.
Another source accused Elias of profiteering: “Marc has created a legal strategy he has convinced people is a political strategy, that it is actually [sic] a business strategy.”
