Marc Elias, Election-Denying Democratic Lawyer, Raked in Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars From Bob Casey's Longshot Recount

Democrats paid controversial elections lawyer Marc Elias hundreds of thousands of dollars in a failed bid to help Sen. Bob Casey (D.) overturn the results of the Pennsylvania Senate election, according to campaign records.

The Casey campaign paid $36,435 to Elias's firm, the Elias Law Group, from November 15 to November 25, campaign finance disclosures show. The campaign contributed $2.2 million to the "legal fund" for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which in turn paid the Elias Law Group $313,776 on November 20. The firm represented the Casey campaign and the DSCC in lawsuits in multiple Pennsylvania counties to count mail-in and provisional ballots.

The Democratic National Committee paid the Elias Law Group $305,000 for "legal services," records show. It is unclear if all of those funds went toward Elias's work on behalf of Casey, but the first payment of $100,000 was made on November 8, the day Elias joined the Casey recount effort. In all, Democrats paid the Elias Law Group more than $650,000 in the weeks after the election.

Elias, known for using bare-knuckle tactics to help Democrats win, joined the Casey legal fight a day after the Associated Press called the Senate race in favor of Republican Dave McCormick. Casey trailed by around 40,000 votes but refused to concede the race, saying that "every vote must be counted."

"The Pennsylvania Senate race is not over," Elias tweeted on November 7. "More soon."

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania conducted an automatic recount of the race. Casey conceded on November 21 and ultimately lost by around 15,000 votes when the Pennsylvania Department of State certified the election last week.

Republicans portrayed Casey as an election denier over his refusal to concede the race. Others saw Elias's involvement in the recount as a futile bid to generate media buzz and revenue for his law firm.

​​"They may bring Elias to raise money for the DNC and stir up the base on Twitter, but at the expense of Bob Casey's legacy," one Republican said of Elias, who also represented the Kamala Harris campaign.

"There is no path forward for Elias but money-making," another Republican told the Washington Free Beacon.

The Harris campaign and the DNC also used the Casey recount to raise funds to pay off debts incurred during the election. The "Harris Fight Fund" sent out a steady stream of fundraising emails soliciting money for legal battles and recounts throughout the country. A majority of the proceeds from the fund went to the DNC, with a small fraction going directly to state Democratic parties.

Elias and other Casey lawyers filed numerous lawsuits across Pennsylvania to force local election boards to count faulty mail-in and provisional ballots that had been tossed out by local election officials. In Bucks County, outside Philadelphia, Casey allies on the county commission voted to openly defy state law by counting illegal mail-in ballots that lacked proper signatures and dates.

Elias has been at the center of numerous Democratic election ploys. As general counsel for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, Elias commissioned the infamous Steele dossier, which falsely accused Donald Trump of colluding with Russia. Elias represented former Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D., N.Y.) in a 2021 lawsuit that claimed voter machine irregularities stole thousands of votes from Brindisi in his race against Republican Claudia Tenney. That same year, Elias pressured House Democrats to overturn Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks's (R., Iowa) victory over his client, Democrat Rita Hart.

The Elias Law Group also was linked to a murky nonprofit group called Evidence for Impact, which funded a super PAC that ran ads supporting anti-abortion activist Randall Terry and Libertarian Chase Oliver for president, the Free Beacon reported.

The Elias Law Group did not respond to a request for comment.

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