Lawyers Sanctioned for Attempts to Overturn Election Results
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, sanctions were imposed on various lawyers who brought a frivolous case seeking to decertify the 2020 presidential election results in Michigan. The lawyers — including former President Donald Trump’s lawyers Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood — face monetary sanctions, mandatory legal education and possible disbarment in other jurisdictions due to their far-fetched attempts to overturn the votes of more than 5.4 million Michiganders who voted in the 2020 election.
Judge Linda Parker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan wrote a lengthy and detailed opinion highlighting how the lawyers in King v. Whitmer sought to use the legal system to push a political narrative that was not grounded in any legal or factual reality. Writing about the bald assertions of voter fraud presented throughout the case by the lawyers, Parker found that the “Plaintiffs’ counsel presented pleadings for which the factual contentions lacked evidentiary support.” Further, she wrote that “there is a basis to conclude that Plaintiffs’ legal team asserted the allegations in their pleadings as opinion rather than fact, with the purpose of furthering counsel’s political positions rather than pursuing any attainable legal relief.” The court spelled out numerous “deficiencies in the pleadings, which claim violations of Michigan election law without a thorough understanding of what the law requires, and the number of failed election-challenge lawsuits that Plaintiffs’ attorneys have filed” in support of her order for monetary sanctions and mandatory legal education. Regarding disbarment referrals, Parker wrote that the multitude of professional and legal ethics that were violated by these lawyers “calls into question their fitness to practice law” and therefore warrants investigation into all the participating lawyers.