It would be one thing if Norm Eisen were just a bystander, cheering on the prospect of a potential political prosecution of his nemesis, President Trump. But unsurprisingly, a little digging reveals that Norm Eisen has enjoyed a much more direct and disturbing involvement in shaping the January 6 Committee than previously understood. The details are scandalous, but not surprising. After all, we reported years ago that there is no man alive more decorated for plots against Trump, and why should January 6 be any different?
An honest broker?
To understand Norm Eisen’s role as the hand guiding the January 6 Committee, we will first go back to February, 2021. In an opinion piece for USA Today, Norm Eisen praised Bennie Thompson for filing a lawsuit against Trump (emphasis ours):
The repetition of the core falsehood that led to the deadly insurrection is not to be taken lightly. Trump used the lies about his election loss to fuel the rage of his followers for months — culminating in the deadly attack on the Capitol. If Trump and his ilk successfully co-opt the bona fide patriotism felt by their millions of followers, turning a love of country into a potent anti-democratic force, they will very likely stimulate more violence. They are also breaking the bedrock of our democracy: faith in our free and fair elections.
This ongoing campaign of lies must be stopped with an aggressive legal campaign.
First and foremost, all civil remedies for the ongoing peddling of the Big Lie need to be pursued. We welcome Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson’s lawsuit with the NAACP alleging that Trump, Rudy Giuliani and the far-right groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers conspired to incite the violence during the Electoral College vote.
Thompson alleges that all of these defendants violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 — a law created during Reconstruction and aptly deployed here — to “prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat,” any office holder from performing their duties.
[USA Today
Eisen is referring to a memory-holed lawsuit that most of the American public has never heard about.
As Revolver reported last year, five months before he was tapped as chairman of the Commission, Rep. Thompson filed a lawsuit in his personal capacity, with himself as lead plaintiff, against four parties: Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, the Oath Keepers organization, and the Proud Boys organization. In his complaint, Thompson alleges an “Alley Oop” conspiracy theory of January 6. According to this theory, Trump and his agents on the inside conspired with the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and agents on the outside to incite a crowd to attack the Capitol (emphasis ours):The insurrection at the Capitol was a direct, intended, and foreseeable result of the Defendants’ unlawful conspiracy. It was instigated according to a common plan that the Defendants pursued since the election held in November 2020, culminating in an assembly denominated as the “Save America” rally held at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, during which Defendants Trump and Giuliani incited a crowd of thousands to descend upon the Capitol in order to prevent or delay through the use of force the counting of Electoral College votes. As part of this unified plan to prevent the counting of Electoral College votes, Defendants Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, through their leadership, acted in concert to spearhead the assault on the Capitol while the angry mob that Defendants Trump and Giuliani incited descended on the Capitol. The carefully orchestrated series of events that unfolded at the Save America rally and the storming of the Capitol was no accident or coincidence. It was the intended and foreseeable culmination of a carefully coordinated campaign to interfere with the legal process required to confirm the tally of votes cast in the Electoral College.
Bennie Thompson ultimately dropped his lawsuit when he was appointed to head the January 6 Committee in order to “avoid the appearance of conflict.” Thompson’s dropped lawsuit against Trump was predicated on a theory that the “insurrection at the Capitol was a direct, intended, and foreseeable result” of an “unlawful conspiracy.” How is it not already a conflict of interest for Thompson to go from that lawsuit to chairing a congressional committee tasked with fairly and objectively investigating, without any preconceived notions, what happened on January 6th? Appointing Thompson to chair the January 6 Committee after he initiated the lawsuit in question is just as much a conflict of interest as, say, appointing Henry Kissinger to chair the 9/11 commission.
If Bennie Thompson walked into the Committee with a preconceived theory of the case for January 6 advanced in his lawsuit, the question arises as to where this theory ultimately came from. After all, the lawsuit had a well-laid-out theory of January 6 in mid February, which is barely a month after January 6th. That’s a pretty quick turn around. Did Bennie Thompson come up with the Trump, Giuliani, Proud Boy, Oath Keeper conspiracy theory himself? Of course not.
In the Norm Eisen quote above, Eisen refers to Thompson’s “lawsuit with the NAACP.” Along with the NAACP, Joseph Sellers of the law firm Cohen Milstein represented Thompson in the lawsuit.
As it turns out, Joseph Sellers and Norm Eisen are friends. The following excerpt is from an interview with Norm Eisen on a podcast called “Talking Feds” (emphasis ours):One interesting lawsuit that happened and one that seems possibly to be ripening toward market. And I just wanted to talk briefly about them, so there’s first this Bennie Thompson suit under, let’s get nerdy a little bit on ’em, Norm… USC 1985, Section 1. And there was a kind of at least poetic justice there, given it’s the Ku Klux Klan Act. And Norm, how about the quick skinny on what that suit is, and whether you think it’s a serious prospect to have Trump at least have to be deposed?
Norm Eisen [00:40:30] A very serious threat to Trump. It’s Representative Thompson suing Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Section 1985 is a well-known grounds for civil litigation. What’s unusual is that it’s Section 1985-1, which is a prohibition on conspiring to prevent anyone holding an office of the United States from discharging their official duties…
Harry Litman [00:41:04] From doing their job, right? It’s like perfect for this.
Norm Eisen [00:41:07] It’s very seldom deployed, very clever. They’ve got great litigants on the poetic justice front. It’s called the Klan Act because it was passed after the Civil War because the Klan was running rampant, blocking reconstruction by fighting federal, state and local officials in reconstruction, and the poetic justice of having the NAACP litigating the case as counsel for Congressman Thompson and also one of the great, great civil rights lawyers, my friend Joe Sellers at Cohen Milstein.
[Talking Feds]
So the January 6th conspiracy theory lawsuit that Bennie Thompson launched against Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers was essentially conceived of and written by Cohen Milstein lawyer Joe Sellers, Norm Eisen’s friend.
It is hard to imagine that Eisen wouldn’t have offered strategic and legal direction to his friend Joe Sellers in the preparation of this lawsuit. In fact, not only are Norm Eisen and Joe Sellers friends, they have a professional history of working together in anti-Trump operations.
Recall that way back on January 23, 2017, Norm Eisen’s lawfare outfit CREW filed a civil suit against Trump for his alleged violation of the Emoluments clause of the Constitution. The absurd suit was predicated on the theory that some foreign government officials would stay at Trump properties while visiting D.C., therefore violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the constitution banning presidents from taking gifts from foreign officials.
The merits of the now defunct complaint are unimportant for our purposes. What’s relevant for our purposes is the fact that Joe Sellers was co-counsel to Norm Eisen in this anti-Trump lawsuit dating back to just days after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017:CREW, ROC and Washington, DC-based events booker Jill Phaneuf are represented in the case by an all-star team of top constitutional scholars, ethics experts and litigators who have combined to argue 45 cases before the Supreme Court. The lawyers on the case include CREW’s board chair and vice-chair Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyers for the last two presidents, constitutional law scholars Erwin Chemerinsky, Laurence H. Tribe and Zephyr Teachout, Deepak Gupta of Gupta Wessler PLLC and Joseph Sellers of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
[CREW]
It is notable that Joe Seller
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