A nonprofit organization founded by lawyers opposed to Donald Trump secretly provided substantial assistance to state and local prosecutors pursuing criminal cases against the former president, according to records and communications reviewed by Just the News. The arrangement raises pointed questions about whether ostensibly independent state prosecutions were, in fact, coordinated through a politically motivated legal network operating behind the scenes.
The organization, the 65 Project, was established with the stated goal of holding accountable attorneys who assisted Trump's efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. But its activities extended well beyond bar complaints and public advocacy. Internal records indicate the group provided research, legal memoranda, and other support directly to prosecutors' offices in multiple jurisdictions, all while presenting itself as a nonpartisan accountability effort.
As Just the News reported, the 65 Project's behind-the-scenes coordination with prosecutors was far more extensive than previously understood. The nonprofit funneled legal research and strategic assistance to state-level officials who were building criminal cases against Trump and his allies. That support was not disclosed publicly at the time, and the prosecutors' offices involved did not volunteer the relationship.
The 65 Project was co-founded by Michael Teter and David Brock, the latter a longtime progressive operative who also founded Media Matters for America. Brock's involvement alone signals the political orientation of the effort. The group launched in early 2022 and quickly began filing bar complaints against lawyers who had represented Trump in election-related litigation.
But the bar complaints were the public-facing work. The private work, the pipeline of legal support flowing to prosecutors, operated with little scrutiny until records surfaced showing the scope of the collaboration.
The arrangement functioned as a kind of shadow support system. Prosecutors pursuing cases against Trump or his associates received research products and legal analysis from the 65 Project without the public, defense attorneys, or courts necessarily knowing about the nonprofit's involvement. The records reviewed by Just the News show communications between 65 Project personnel and officials in multiple state jurisdictions where Trump faced legal exposure.
This matters for a straightforward reason. Criminal prosecutions carry the weight of the state. When a district attorney or attorney general brings charges, the public expects that the case was built by the government's own lawyers using the government's own resources and judgment. The insertion of an outside political organization into that process, especially one funded by partisan donors and led by operatives with an explicit anti-Trump mission, raises serious due process and ethical concerns.
Defense attorneys in criminal cases are entitled to know who is assisting the prosecution. Brady obligations and discovery rules exist precisely to prevent the government from hiding the ball. If a politically motivated nonprofit was feeding research into a prosecution, that fact is arguably discoverable material, and its concealment could become grounds for legal challenges.
The 65 Project's activities did not exist in a vacuum. They fit within a broader pattern of progressive legal organizations working to use the judicial system against Trump and his political allies. Groups like Protect Democracy, States United Democracy Center, and others have openly or quietly provided assistance to government actors pursuing Trump-related cases.
What distinguishes the 65 Project's conduct, based on the records reported by Just the News, is the secrecy. The group did not publicly announce that it was aiding prosecutors. It did not register as a participant in the cases. It operated in the background, providing the intellectual and legal infrastructure for prosecutions that were presented to the public as the independent work of elected or appointed law enforcement officials.
For conservatives who have long argued that the multiple prosecutions of Trump were politically coordinated rather than independently conceived, these records offer concrete evidence of at least one mechanism through which that coordination occurred. The question is no longer whether outside political actors influenced the prosecutions. The question is how deeply that influence ran and whether it compromised the legal proceedings themselves.
The 65 Project operated as a nonprofit, which means its donor list is not fully public. What is known is that the organization drew support from progressive donors and operated within the constellation of groups connected to David Brock's political network. Brock has spent decades building interlocking organizations designed to advance progressive causes through media pressure, legal action, and political opposition research.
The financial opacity matters. If donors with a direct political interest in seeing Trump prosecuted were funding an organization that was secretly assisting those prosecutions, the entire chain of activity takes on a different character. It moves from advocacy to something closer to the private funding of public law enforcement, a practice that has drawn bipartisan criticism in other contexts.
Several states have debated or enacted restrictions on privately funded prosecutors, particularly after controversies involving organizations that paid for assistant district attorneys embedded in government offices. The 65 Project's model appears to sidestep those restrictions by providing research and analysis rather than personnel, but the functional effect may be similar.
The revelations create potential legal exposure on multiple fronts. Defense teams in any case where the 65 Project provided assistance could argue that the prosecution failed to disclose material relationships with outside political actors. Depending on the jurisdiction, that failure could trigger discovery disputes, evidentiary hearings, or even challenges to the integrity of the proceedings.
Bar regulators could also face questions. The 65 Project filed complaints against Trump-aligned lawyers for alleged ethical violations. If the organization was simultaneously engaged in undisclosed coordination with prosecutors, its own attorneys may face scrutiny over whether they complied with professional responsibility rules governing candor, conflicts of interest, and the unauthorized practice of law in jurisdictions where they were not licensed.
The irony is sharp. An organization built to punish lawyers for their involvement in Trump's legal battles may have engaged in precisely the kind of conduct that invites professional discipline: operating outside the bounds of transparency and candor that the legal profession demands.
Investigators and the public will need to determine several critical facts. Authorities have not publicly confirmed the full list of jurisdictions where the 65 Project provided prosecutorial assistance. The precise nature of the legal research shared with prosecutors has not been fully detailed. Whether any prosecutors disclosed the 65 Project's involvement to courts or defense attorneys remains unclear from the current record.
It is also not yet established whether the 65 Project's assistance influenced charging decisions, meaning whether prosecutors brought cases or added charges they might not have pursued without the nonprofit's research. That question sits at the heart of the matter. If an outside political group shaped the substance of a criminal prosecution, the legitimacy of that prosecution is fundamentally in question.
Congressional investigators may also take interest. Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee have already probed the coordination between progressive legal groups and government actors in Trump-related cases. The 65 Project records could provide a new and concrete thread for oversight.
Criminal prosecution is the most serious power a government wields against its citizens. It can strip liberty, destroy reputations, and reshape political landscapes. That power is supposed to be exercised by accountable public officials acting on their independent legal judgment, not by outside political operatives working through nonprofits funded by anonymous donors.
When that line blurs, public trust in the justice system erodes. And it erodes fastest among the people who already suspect that the system is being weaponized against their political leaders. The 65 Project's secret involvement in state prosecutions does not, by itself, prove that every case against Trump was illegitimate. But it proves that the wall between political activism and criminal law enforcement was thinner than the public was told.
Conservatives have spent years warning that the legal campaign against Trump was coordinated lawfare dressed up as independent justice. These records suggest that warning was not paranoia. It was pattern recognition.
