The Left Claims Another Victim

Cleta Mitchell is the top political and non-profit lawyer on the right. For quite a few years, she has been a partner in Foley & Lardner, a major national law firm that originated in Milwaukee. In recent years, she has been attacked and lied about repeatedly by the Left. This reached a crescendo over the last few days, following the leaked telephone conversation between President Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State, in which she was participated on behalf of the president. The Left mounted a vicious campaign against Cleta, her law firm and her firm’s clients, not accusing her of any wrongdoing other than having the temerity to give advice to the President of the United States.

Yesterday, in an email to clients and friends, Cleta announced her departure from Foley & Lardner. I am reproducing the email with her permission:

Clients and Friends:

Given all that has transpired over the last few days, I wanted to share this personal message with you, which comes solely from me and not from my law firm, Foley & Lardner, LLP.

As you are probably aware, there has been a massive pressure campaign in the last several days mounted by leftist groups via social media and other means against me, my law firm, and clients of the law firm, because of my personal involvement with President Trump, his campaign and the White House, related to the November 3 general election in Georgia.

After discussions with my firm’s management, I have decided that it is in both of our interests that I leave the Firm.

I have been a partner at Foley for almost 20 years. It has been a good legal, professional, and personal home for me, my clients and my practice and I deeply appreciate the opportunity to be a partner at Foley all these years. I have come to the conclusion, however, that I do not wish to distract the Firm, my colleagues or our clients with the ongoing campaign of hateful, vile, and offensive attacks that have inundated our Firm and clients, and which I know will persist from these left wing pressure groups. That is not good for anyone and especially not good for our clients.

I thank the Firm for its support of my political law practice all these years despite ongoing assaults through the years against me, my clients and my work. With the ever more brazen attacks on conservatives and, most especially, anyone who supports and wants to help President Trump, I realize that a large national law firm is no longer the right platform for me or my law practice.

Election integrity is something I have been quite passionate about for many, many years. That was and remains my goal in trying to get to the truth about the Georgia election results. Those who deny the existence of voter and election fraud are not in touch with facts and reality. I fully intend to redouble my efforts in this arena after I leave the Firm.

For those of you who are my clients, we will talk in the next several days about a transition of your matters. Those will be confidential discussions between us.

I look forward to having those conversations with you and doing what I can to assist each of you. Blessings to you and Happy New Year. Cleta

Cleta will be fine. She is a great lawyer and will not lose any clients. She can hire an associate or two and set up her own practice, or join one of a handful of boutique law firms with practices that lean to the right. Nevertheless, the extent to which the far Left has been successful in banning conservatives from mainstream businesses and institutions is chilling.

One can contrast Cleta Mitchell’s situation with that of Marc Elias, a partner in the Perkins Coie law firm, originally from Seattle. Perkins Coie is comparable to Foley & Lardner in size and stature. Elias is the Democrats’ top election lawyer, and he has played a controversial role in his representations of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic campaigns. In particular, it was Elias and Perkins Coie who laundered money from the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign, falsely recording it as legal expenses in FEC filings when in fact the money was used by Elias to hire the disreputable opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn paid Christopher Steele to fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.

Here, Elias played the role of a bagman for the Democrats in a way that was at least arguably illegal. But he has not been attacked for it, let alone driven from his law firm by a boycott campaign. What is the difference? The difference is that liberals are mean-spirited bullies, and conservatives are not. This asymmetry is one that will continue to plague our public life for the foreseeable future.

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