Nearly two dozen Democratic state attorneys general quietly signed a confidential legal agreement to coordinate litigation against Donald Trump as early as April 2024, almost seven months before voters returned him to the White House.

The document, titled "PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL COMMON INTEREST AGREEMENT," was obtained by The Center Square and bears the first signatures of seven attorneys general dated April 28, 2024. At least 22 Democratic AGs eventually signed on. Zero Republicans joined. The parties stated they "wish to pursue their common interest concerning Federal Accountability issues and litigation(s) addressing such issues, while avoiding any waiver of the confidentiality of those privileged materials."

The agreement landed just weeks after Trump secured enough delegates in March 2024 to become the presumptive Republican nominee, and roughly three months before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race entirely. By the time Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez added her name on November 12, 2024, Trump had already won his second term seven days earlier, beating Kamala Harris by 2.3 million votes.

Since January 2025, state attorneys general have sued the Trump administration nearly 100 times. California alone has racked up 82 lawsuits and charged its taxpayers $19 million. Colorado has joined at least 75 suits. Washington State has joined 70. Arizona has filed 46. The coordinated effort operated under two names found in public records from the Washington State Attorney General's Office: the "Rule of Law Working Group" and the "Project for Federal Accountability."

DC's attorney general signed first, and 13 more joined within weeks

District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb's signature appeared first on the agreement, dated April 28, 2024. Six other AGs signed the same day. Thirteen more joined in May or June 2024. California's signature was undated.

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown told The Center Square that planning began "as soon as it was clear that Trump was going to get the nomination." He said the AGs "talked through a host of possibilities" and "wanted to be prepared, not to get caught off guard." Brown denied the effort amounted to targeting Trump before the election.

"I don't think we were going after him, or any AG was, because he hadn't been elected (yet)."

That framing does not sit well with critics who note the agreement was drafted, circulated, and signed by nearly two dozen officials while Biden was still the sitting president and the presumptive Democratic nominee. Former Arizona Solicitor General O.H. Skinner, now executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, called the timeline "very revealing."

"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 added that the attorneys general "didn't have a concern about federal overreach until they thought the other team was going to be in charge" and said they "needed to plan ahead and endeavor to build a juggernaut if they wanted to have any hope of slowing down the president's agenda."

Former Washington AG Ferguson admitted his team prepared for "months"

Bob Ferguson, who served as Washington State's attorney general before becoming governor, said one day after the 2024 election that his office had been gearing up for potential litigation well in advance.

"We knew from our extensive experience during his first term that we would need to be prepared from day one if he was reelected."

Ferguson went further, saying his team had "gone line-by-line through Project 2025" and had been "tracking remarks by Trump on the campaign trail." He expressed concern that "Donald Trump, I believe, and his administration, may well be better prepared on their end." The Center Square reached out to Ferguson's office for an interview and did not receive a response.

The Trump administration has faced coordinated legal resistance from Democratic state officials on multiple fronts. The Supreme Court has sided with the administration in several high-profile cases, but the sheer volume of litigation, nearly 100 suits in roughly 18 months, has created a sustained drag on federal policy.

Hundreds of pages released by Washington State came back blacked out

Public records from the Washington State Attorney General's Office revealed the coordination structure, but most of the substance remained hidden. Hundreds of pages were released entirely redacted under attorney work-product exemptions. The Center Square successfully appealed some redactions, uncovering the names of people on the original email chains, and is continuing to appeal additional redactions.

The agreement itself was designed to keep information from the public. Its stated purpose included "avoiding any waiver of the confidentiality of those privileged materials" related to the litigation effort. Retired Connecticut Judge Thomas Moukawsher said common interest agreements are legitimate legal tools, but questioned whether this one met the standard.

"But what is their common interest? We can't establish what their common interests are. I don't like it. If I was sitting as a judge on the case, I'd say you need to have something a little more specific. That's just a little strange. 'Federal Accountability?'"

The vagueness of the agreement's scope is the point, critics argue. A common interest agreement tied to a specific case or statute would look routine. One organized around a two-word political slogan, "Federal Accountability", looks like a litigation campaign with a brand name.

California authorized $25 million for the fight; New Jersey added $1 million

The costs are not hypothetical. California passed a bill known as SBX1-1 authorizing the state's Department of Finance to spend up to $25 million on "federal accountability litigation." California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced at a news conference this week that the lawsuits have already cost California taxpayers $19 million. He characterized the suits as "apolitical."

"If (Trump) doesn't want to get sued, all he has to do is follow the law."

Bonta also said he does not expect the cases to be dismissed and that "Trump shows no sign of slowing down, so we will continue to sue him." Meanwhile, the Supreme Court recently affirmed the president's executive authority in a landmark ruling that overturned 90 years of precedent, a decision that undercuts at least some of the legal theories driving these state-level challenges.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy added $1 million to the state's fiscal year 2026 budget for the Project for Federal Accountability. Budget records described the money as "essential" to fund two positions and to "provide critical support... to protect our residents from reckless and illegal actions by the federal government that harm New Jerseyans." The same records noted that previous costs "have been negligible" because the Attorney General's Office had been "relying on preexisting resources."

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport's spokeswoman, Allison Inserro, declined an interview request from The Center Square. Democratic AGs in Oregon, Virginia, and Wisconsin also declined to say whether they signed the agreement.

Pennsylvania's Republican AG has not said whether the state remains in the pact

One wrinkle involves Pennsylvania, where voters elected Republican Dave Sunday as attorney general in November 2024, replacing a Democrat. Sunday has not responded to questions about whether Pennsylvania remains part of the common interest agreement. Virginia's AG office flipped from Republican to Democrat in January 2026.

The Republican Attorneys General Association has not commented on the document. The political dynamics around Trump's involvement in state-level races have intensified as the legal battles multiply.

According to data from Just Security, a digital law and policy journal at New York University, 11 of the cases brought by state AGs have closed in favor of the plaintiffs. Four have been dismissed in favor of the federal government. The remaining suits are still active. By comparison, Marquette University data collected in 2025 found that state AGs filed 122 multistate lawsuits against the Biden administration over four years, of which only six were launched by Democrats and two were bipartisan.

Former Utah AG calls the coordinated effort "a big, huge waste"

Former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a Republican who served from 2001 to 2013 and now says he often votes for Democrats, called the pre-election timing of the agreement unusual. "That's not normal at all," he said. Shurtleff described how the role of state attorney general has shifted from bipartisan cooperation to partisan confrontation.

"It's a big selling point now. I get lots of emails from people running for attorney general, lots of texts and emails saying, 'We've got to stop President Trump' or 'We've got to work together as state attorneys general. That's why you need to give me money!' and vice versa. It goes both ways... I don't think that's the best use of an attorney general's time."

Shurtleff said bipartisan cooperation was once routine but "became more combative over time, which I hated." He left office in early 2013, "just when it was starting to get nasty." He did not spare the current crop of AGs from either party.

"It's just horrible. It's a big, huge waste of attorney general time and the good things that you could accomplish together. It's a shame. It's way too much. I think it's ridiculous."

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, offered a different view in an interview at the Capitol. He compared the Democratic AGs' strategy to what Republican attorneys general did during the Obama years.

"Look where we are now. (The Democratic attorneys general) did what Republican attorneys general did with President Obama's stimulus plan in 2009: 'everything he's for, we're against.'"

Kaine's comparison, though, glosses over a key distinction. Republican AGs during the Obama era challenged specific policies after they were enacted. The document obtained by The Center Square shows Democratic AGs organizing a coordinated legal infrastructure months before Trump even won the election, and structuring it to keep the details secret. The broader political climate around Trump has grown more charged with each passing month, but a confidential pact among nearly two dozen state law enforcement officers to prepare lawsuits against a candidate who had not yet been elected sits in a category of its own.

Arizona AG Kris Mayes's communications director, Richie Taylor, offered a written statement insisting "there is nothing particularly significant about that date" and that "the office has common interest agreements with Republican AG's as well as Democratic AG's depending on the litigation." That defense would be more persuasive if a single Republican had signed this particular agreement.

A litigation machine built before the voters had their say

The picture that emerges from the confidential agreement, the redacted public records, the budget line items, and the on-the-record interviews is straightforward. Twenty-two Democratic attorneys general saw Trump's nomination coming, concluded he might win, and built a litigation machine months before voters went to the polls. They gave it a political brand name. They structured it to shield their internal deliberations from public view. And they began spending taxpayer money to staff it before a single policy had been challenged.

None of this is illegal. Common interest agreements are standard legal tools. AGs have every right to prepare for policy disputes. But the scale, the secrecy, the partisan uniformity, and the timing, all of it predating the election, reveal something the participating AGs would rather not say plainly: this was not a response to federal overreach. It was a premeditated strategy to obstruct an administration that many in the political establishment decided should not be allowed to govern without constant legal interference.

When two dozen state officials sign a secret pact to sue a president before voters have even chosen him, the word for that is not "accountability." It is the machinery of resistance dressed in legal robes, and taxpayers are footing the bill.