Coordinated Lawfare: How Norm Eisen's Network Targeted Michigan's 2020 Election Questioners

By Patrice Johnson, Founder and Chairperson, Michigan Fair Elections Institute

November 17, 2025

AI was used in creation of this article.

Newly released documents from Judicial Watch reveal a troubling pattern: a sophisticated, multi-state operation coordinated by the States United Democracy Center to prosecute and disbar Michigan citizens who questioned the 2020 election. The 5,789 pages obtained through FOIA requests expose what appears to be a textbook application of tactics outlined in co-founder Norm Eisen’s “Democracy Playbook.”

States United Democracy Center, launched by Eisen — former President Obama’s “ethics czar” and lead counsel in the first impeachment of President Donald Trump — operated as the coordinating hub for Democratic attorneys general across multiple swing states. The documents show frequent communication between States United’s top litigator Jonathan Williams and Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s office, including references to “regular briefings” and draft “Common Interest Agreements” to coordinate prosecutions across state lines.

This coordination mirrors precisely the strategies Eisen detailed in his 100-page Brookings Institution report, THE DEMOCRACY PLAYBOOK: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding (2019). The Playbook, as it is called, lays out tactics of forming “transnational networks between civil society groups, other opposition groups, local electoral activists, international organizations” to contest elections and mobilize legal pressure. The Playbook explicitly advocates using lawfare — coordinated legal challenges — to “slow or obstruct” political opponents and “forcefully contest each individual illiberal act.”

The irony is staggering. Eisen’s Playbook frames such tactics as “defending democracy” against authoritarians. Yet here we see these same methods deployed against American citizens exercising their constitutional right to question election procedures and outcomes. Michigan Republicans, including attorney Matthew DePerno, faced criminal prosecution simply for raising concerns about election integrity — concerns shared by millions of Michiganders.

The documents reveal States United maintained a “litigation tracker” monitoring efforts across all states, coordinated 14th Amendment challenges to remove Trump from ballots (unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson), and produced action plans targeting “Election Deniers” in Michigan and Arizona primaries. They characterized citizens asking legitimate questions about election administration as “posing a threat to our democracy.”

Attorney General Nessel’s indictments of Trump alternative electors were ultimately thrown out by a judge, but the damage was done. Citizens were criminally charged, faced enormous legal bills, and endured public vilification—all as part of what appears to be a coordinated national strategy directed from Washington, D.C.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s documented “extreme and incurable bias against President Trump” (as noted in court filings for Davis v. Benson and Trump, No. 23-000128) further demonstrates how state officials became willing participants in this coordinated campaign.

Judicial Watch continues pursuing similar records from Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin, suggesting this conspiracy extends far beyond Michigan. Eisen previously participated in the “Transition Integrity Project” war games and was prominently featured in Time Magazine’s February 2021 article describing “a well-funded cabal of powerful people” working “behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”

The question every Michigander should ask: Were our state officials serving Michigan citizens, or executing a playbook written by partisan Washington operatives to criminalize political opposition?

When the same tactics Eisen refined studying Ukraine’s Orange Revolution get deployed against American citizens, “defending democracy” becomes indistinguishable from, even synonymous with, destroying it.

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