Trump Taps Nevada ‘Stop the Steal’ Lawyer to Defend Him in Civil Rights Suit

Former President Trump has chosen Jesse Binnall, a Republican lawyer who filed a lawsuit attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Nevada, to represent him in a lawsuit that alleges he violated the 1871 Ku Klux Klan act by inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Mississippi Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson and the NAACP filed the suit in February against Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the Oath Keepers militia, alleging that they “conspired to incite an assembled crowd” in Washington, D.C. to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6 and disrupt the counting of electoral votes.

Court documents filed in the lawsuit on Thursday show that Jesse Binnall will represent Trump in the suit.

Binnall represented former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn alongside Sidney Powell in his criminal trial for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Flynn was subsequently pardoned.

More recently, Binnall was involved in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election with a lawsuit against election officials in Nevada. He testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in December and claimed that 42,000 people voted more than once during Nevada’s 2020 election—a claim since debunked by fact-checkers.

Binnall is also representing Defending the Republic, a legal organization founded by Sidney Powell to pursue lawsuits that sought to overturn election results from the election, in a $1.3 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Powell and the legal group.

On Twitter, Binnall is a vocal conservative and member of the MAGA faithful. On Jan. 6, as Congress tallied up President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, Binnall echoed Trump’s disdain for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who the former president viewed as disloyal for his refusal to prevent the certification of Biden’s win.

“He is going to be the minority leader because he’s a coward and turning a blind eye to voter fraud. Any Senator that continues to support his leadership should be thrown out,” Binnall tweeted.