The Joe Biden years proved a hard truth: Lawfare works, and the right is far more vulnerable to it than the left.
Stacked judiciaries, activist allies, and unprincipled prosecutors all play their parts. But one factor matters above all others: money.
The left built a legal machine because it understood power. The right must build one because it understands what happens when power goes undefended.
Lawsuits are expensive. So are investigations, subpoenas, demand letters, bar complaints, defamation claims, and congressional inquiries. The left figured out that it could move political disputes into legal disputes and shift the fight to terrain overwhelmingly favorable to itself.
The cost is the punishment
The left has nearly conquered major law firm culture. Despite President Trump’s early executive orders aimed at changing that landscape, little has materially shifted. The left still enjoys a vast network of pro bono and donor-funded legal organizations ready to defend allies and pursue enemies.
Look no further than the nearly billion-dollar Southern Poverty Law Center, which has served as an investigative engine for government action against political opponents. That is one organ in a much larger ecosystem, and it dwarfs anything available on the right.
Similar efforts are already preparing for the possibility that Democrats win a House or Senate majority and then the presidency in 2028. If that happens, the right will return to the Biden years, with one key difference: The left views its earlier campaign as unfinished business. Its base believes Merrick Garland did not go far enough. Next time, they will.
The mere receipt of a congressional subpoena, demand letter, defamation claim, bar complaint, or federal investigative request can create legal bills that climb into the tens of thousands of dollars. Competent defense costs money, and the people most likely to become targets often cannot afford it.
The old model failed
During the Biden years, several noble efforts raised money for legal defense. But the old model had limits. A few senior-level individuals benefited from donor generosity. The money rarely reached the broader class of people caught in the machinery of political targeting.
The reason was simple: Lawyers are expensive.
I saw this firsthand. A friend of mine, a senior White House official in his early 30s who had not even been at the Capitol on January 6, received a subpoena from the January 6 committee and a not-so-friendly outreach from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was on his own.
Big lawyers charging big fees were representing bigger players. He received quotes he could never dream of affording just to deal with the investigation. For lack of a better term, he was pretty screwed.
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I represented him pro bono and handled the January 6 committee and a daylong deposition. Weeks of prep and review went into the matter. Even discounted representation from a firm with relevant expertise would easily have cost tens of thousands of dollars.
The story has a happy ending. My friend now works at the FBI.
But that is one person and one story. My organization, the Oversight Project, does what it can to represent allies across the country caught in the crosshairs of weaponized targeting. Far more must be done before the next wave arrives.
Build the bench
The right needs to rethink legal defense. We can no longer hope to collect vast sums and spend them on a handful of high-priced outside lawyers. A serious movement needs a dedicated defense team.
The fundamental problem is cost. The model cannot depend on hourly fees that crest above $1,000.
The left has built a corps of highly paid attorneys who handle matters ranging from major lawsuits to symbolic complaints over reflecting pools or the naming of the Kennedy Center. Its financiers will pay lawyers to sue constantly and defend constantly.
The right has the opposite problem. It must accept that reality and build the equivalent of a nonprofit public defense network.
That may seem unfair to right-leaning lawyers who deserve the million-dollar paydays available in the left-wing ecosystem. But a serious political movement must be able to sustain itself by defending itself.
The conservative ecosystem needs major structural reform. Policy shops, communications firms, advocacy groups, and convening organizations all have value. But the movement has too much of that compared with the infrastructure needed to gain and maintain power.
A legal defense unit is one of those structural necessities.
A ‘public defender’ for lawfare
What would a public-defender equivalent for political allies on the right look like?
The current model concentrates money in legal defense funds that serve a few high-profile defendants and a few expensive, well-credentialed lawyers. The better model would create permanent, full-time attorneys working on salary inside a nonprofit structure to defend more people at lower cost.
Some cases will still require outside counsel or a hybrid approach. But the goal should be to build, credential, and develop a specialized legal bench equipped to handle lawfare.
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That bench should also reap the political rewards the so-called conservative legal movement has long monopolized: prominent appointments, elected office, and leadership positions. The days of prestigious Big Law careers converting automatically into prestigious political patronage should end unless they include acts of sacrifice and service to the broader cause.
Defense efforts should prioritize those most in need: ICE officers, mid-level political appointees, local officials, young staffers, activists, and others without meaningful financial resources.
The effort must also maintain integrity. Resources should go only to cases that can honestly be characterized as political weaponization. A legal-defense network cannot become a mechanism for defraying the costs of white-collar crime, contract solicitation, self-dealing, or financial misconduct.
This is not about shielding wrongdoing. It is about ensuring that actual ethical violations, not political speech or service to conservative causes, trigger professional consequences.
Change the incentives
When one side can impose costs without meaningful pushback, it will keep doing so. When the other side develops the institutional ability to absorb those costs and impose consequences in return, the incentive structure changes.
A public-defender-style legal network would create in-house capacity for rapid-response representation when subpoenas, bar complaints, investigations, or lawsuits strike. It would develop specialized expertise in constitutional, administrative, ethics, and First Amendment defenses tailored to political attacks. It would coordinate a nationwide roster of aligned counsel rather than leaving every target to negotiate alone with expensive firms.
Most important, it would operate on a charitable model that directs resources to the most vulnerable clients — the people who would otherwise be destroyed before the real fight even begins.
The left built a legal machine because it understood power. The right must build one because it understands what happens when power goes undefended.
