California Attorney General Rob Bonta called his 82 lawsuits against Donald Trump "apolitical."
Now a confidential document has surfaced – and it was signed before Trump even won.
The signatures inside prove the lawsuits were never about the law.
Democrat AGs Signed Secret Common Interest Agreement in April 2024 to Sue Trump
Investigators at The Center Square obtained a confidential agreement showing Democrat attorneys general secretly coordinated to sue the Trump administration before he won a single vote.
The document is titled "PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL COMMON INTEREST AGREEMENT."
At least 22 Democrat attorneys general signed it
Zero Republican attorneys general signed it.
The first signatures appeared on April 28, 2024 – three months before Joe Biden even dropped out of the race.
The pact had one job: build a litigation machine against a Trump administration that didn't yet exist, then bury the whole operation from public view.
The agreement explicitly states the parties wish to pursue their common interest "while avoiding any waiver of the confidentiality of those privileged materials."
Translation: they planned a legal ambush and built walls to keep Americans from finding out.
The coalition gave its operation a name: the "Project for Federal Accountability."
Former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff – a Republican who now often votes Democrat – said the timing shattered every norm he'd seen across 12 years in office.
"That's not normal at all," Shurtleff told The Center Square.
He signed similar multi-state agreements during his tenure from 2001 through 2013, but never for hypothetical lawsuits prepared long before any administration had taken a single action.
Attorneys general who challenged prior administrations did it after a law passed or a policy took effect – not before the election was even held.
California and New Jersey Taxpayers Are Funding the Anti-Trump Lawsuit Machine
Since January 2025, Democrat attorneys general have sued the Trump administration nearly 100 times.
California's Rob Bonta has joined 82 of those lawsuits.
Colorado's Phil Weiser has joined at least 75.
Washington's Nick Brown has joined 70.
California taxpayers have already spent $19 million funding the effort – with another $25 million authorized under state law SBX1-1 for what Sacramento blandly calls "federal accountability litigation."
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy quietly tucked $1 million into his fiscal year 2026 budget to fund two new staff positions dedicated to the project.
Bonta stood at a news conference this week and called all of it "apolitical."
"If Trump doesn't want to get sued, all he has to do is follow the law," Bonta said.
That line would be funnier if California families weren't paying for it.
Tim Kaine Admitted Democrat Lawsuits Against Trump Are Pure Partisan Warfare
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia dropped the last pretense of legal principle when The Center Square asked about the pre-election coordination.
Kaine didn't call it constitutional duty or protection of civil rights.
He compared it to raw partisan warfare – and sounded proud of it.
"(The Democratic attorneys general) did what Republican attorneys general did with President Obama's stimulus plan in 2009," Kaine said. "'Everything he's for, we're against.'"
Pure tit for tat – funded by California and New Jersey taxpayers who never got a vote on it.
O.H. Skinner, former Arizona solicitor general, told The Center Square the timeline reveals something even Democrats couldn't hide: they never believed Biden was going to win.
"Whatever they said in public, they privately had at least a solid amount of confidence that Joe Biden was never going to win that election," Skinner said. "They didn't have a concern about federal overreach until they thought the other team was going to be in charge."
Retired Connecticut judge Thomas Moukawsher had a harder time finding the legal rationale for keeping the pre-election coordination secret under a banner as vague as "federal accountability."
"That's just a little strange," Moukawsher said.
Project for Federal Accountability Was Built to Overturn Trump's 2024 Mandate
Trump beat Harris by 2.3 million votes and walked away with a clear mandate.
Voters spoke.
Democrat attorneys general answered with a secret pact they'd been building for seven months – coordinated through a "Rule of Law Working Group" and buried under hundreds of pages of redactions that Washington State's attorney general refused to release.
The lawfare machine was never about protecting anyone's rights.
It was built to steal through courts what Democrats couldn't win at the ballot box – and a confidential document with 22 signatures just proved it.
Sources:
- Adam Herbets, TJ Martinell, and Mark Stricherz, "Democrat AGs Planned to Sue Trump Nearly 7 Months Before He Was Reelected," The Center Square, August 5, 2026.
- Matt Margolis, "Now We Have Proof the Democrats' Anti-Trump Lawfare Was Never About the Law," PJ Media, August 6, 2026.
- Ben Smith, "Dem AGs Built Anti-Trump Lawsuit Machine Before Voters Even Had Their Say," RedState, August 6, 2026.
- "Legal War on Trump's Agenda Gains Firepower as Federal Lawyers Defect to Democrats," Fox News, July 7, 2026.
