'Break-glass moment': Election lawyer sounds the alarm over Trump’s threat to US democracy

Elections attorney and Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias is sounding the alarm on President Donald Trump's administration, saying in an interview with The Guardian that the U.S. is at a breaking point.

Elias is best known for leading election-related litigation against the president, with he and his team winning 64 of the 65 cases they worked on in response to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

His efforts have obviously struck a nerve with Trump, who, in a presidential memo, named Elias as a threat to him for his involvement in the Christopher Steele dossier, intelligence memos compiled during the 2016 presidential election that alleged a conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Russian government.

In a March Department of Justice press conference,Trump called Elias a “radical” who was trying to “turn America into a corrupt, communist and third-world country," and in 2018, he called him the “best Election stealing lawyer” after Elias went to work on a close Senate election in Florida in 2018.

Elias says he can't afford to back down.

"We are in the break-glass moment of American history when it comes to free and fair elections and democracy and so, no, I don’t have any hesitation about litigating everything that we possibly can to protect elections,” he said.

Trump and his administration dismiss Elias with name-calling and lies.

Davis Ingle, a spokesman for the White House, said Elias “is a crooked hack who was deeply involved in creating a false ‘dossier’ against President Trump on behalf of his crooked client Hillary Clinton, in order to sway the 2016 election in her favor. Marc Elias is a disgraceful swamp creature and President Trump is draining that swamp.”

Elias says that it's a mistake to ignore Trump's vindictiveness and that not taking him seriously and literally is "one of the great failings" of how people react to his presidency.

“Every day we wake up and we see another vindictive act by this administration against its political opponents, whether they be in elective office or be in the private sector,” he told the Guardian. “I think anyone who uses their voice to speak up against Donald Trump needs to be realistic about the nature of this administration and the threats it poses.”

As for those threats, Elias is on the receiving end of antisemitic slurs, he told The Guardian, and while he ignores most as "trolling," he takes all of them very seriously. But, the biggest threat he sees is Trump.

“Anyone who tells you that Donald Trump targets them and they don’t care, I think they’re just lying to you,” he said. “I think anyone who says they’re not afraid is either a psychopath or a liar. Of course, you’re afraid. Literally, the president of the United States, who ran for election on a campaign of vengeance and revenge, is talking about you. Of course you’re worried.”