If Donald Trump manages to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris at the polls following the Nov. 5 election, he will likely face an even tougher opponent in court: her campaign attorney, Marc Elias.

According to RealClearInvestigation’s Paul Sperry, the seasoned Democratic Party attorney has filed more than 60 pre-election lawsuits aimed at preventing Trump from being elected again. His filings target what he describes as Republican “voter suppression” tactics, such as requiring voters to present identification at polling stations. Echoing a common Democratic position, Elias argues that these measures are “racist” strategies designed to make it more difficult for minority voters to cast their ballots.

“At the same time, Elias has been sending letters to election officials in Georgia and other key swing states threatening legal action if they uphold challenges to voter rolls to remove noncitizens and other ineligible registrants,” Sperry writes. “Some Georgia officials complain that his intimidation tactics are interfering with county registrars’ ability to check the qualifications of voters.

“If Trump is declared the winner, the hard-charging attorney threatens to overturn his election by deploying an army of more than 75 lawyers to sue for ballot recounts in several swing states,” Sperry noted further. “Trump, in turn, has threatened to lock Elias up for election interference, as ABC News moderator David Muir pointed out in last month’s presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris.”

Elias exemplifies the increasing role of “lawfare” in U.S. elections, as both major parties increasingly rely on the courts to gain a competitive advantage, Sperry’s report noted. A recently released Republican National Committee memo reveals that the Trump campaign has filed or joined 123 election-related lawsuits across 26 states, with 82 of these cases in battleground states, aiming to address what they term voter fraud.

Additionally, the campaign has enlisted thousands of lawyers to counter what a Trump attorney anticipates will be an “onslaught of litigation” from the Harris campaign challenging the election outcomes. Naturally, this extensive legal team is also prepared to initiate recounts if Trump does not secure a victory, the report said.

Sperry continued:

Election experts say that these GOP efforts – fueled, in part, by Trump’s claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election – are playing catch-up. Democrats have long been at the forefront of strategies to use the court to impact elections, and no one has been more important to that cause than Elias, who keeps a sign behind his desk that warns: “BEWARE OF ATTACK DEMOCRAT.” 

To many Democrats, he is a hero. The headline of a 2022 profile of Elias in the New Yorker called Elias, “The First Defense Against Trump’s Assault on Democracy.”

“Mr. Elias is part of a massive and well-funded partisan leftist operation notorious for using lawfare to undermine election integrity,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told Sperry. “Making it easier to steal elections is the antithesis of ‘democracy.’”

Republicans, meanwhile, have been preparing for this.

Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump said in April during an interview that her organization has been ramping up in preparation for the coming election cycle, to heavily monitor key polling centers, beginning with early voting in many parts of the country and remaining vigilant up to and through the November election.

In an interview with Newsmax TV host Eric Bolling, the former president’s daughter-in-law declared: “We all know 2020 wasn’t on the up and up.” She did not clarify what she meant specifically, but reports during the 2020 election indicated problems at some polling spots, such as when workers blocked windows at a facility in Detroit.

In any event, Lara Trump was speaking in the context of ensuring that the RNC was as prepared as the Democratic National Committee in terms of ensuring they had enough poll watchers and attorneys should any problems arise.

She also told Bolling that the RNC had just won a key election integrity case in Pennsylvania and was involved in similar actions in dozens of cases around the country.

Lara Trump also told Bolling that the RNC has 100,000 poll workers prepared to “count how many ballots come in and how many ballots come out of every single polling location.” And she said the organization was prepared to take on, legally, anyone believed to be “cheating.”