In the tumultuous aftermath of last November's elections, lawyers in Texas, Michigan, Colorado and elsewhere who represented the interests of Donald J. Trump repeatedly filed lawsuits in federal courts asserting “factual” claims about the election process that had no basis in fact.
For example, in Michigan, Sydney Powell, L. Lin Wood, and several other lawyers filed an action in federal court seeking an order declaring that President Trump had won that state’s election, notwithstanding a vote count showing that Joe Biden was the victor. In Colorado, lawyers filed an action asserting, among other things, that voting machines had deleted nearly 3 million votes cast across the nation in favor of President Trump.
Those lawsuits and others like them were nonsense. But the publicity they generated was part of an outbreak of baseless claims designed to undermine popular belief in the accuracy of the election results showing that Biden had won.
The federal lawsuits had a particularly significant role in undermining trust in our election system. In America, there is, and always has been, widespread faith in the rule of law, the integrity of the process by which the rule of law is implemented, and the role of lawyers participating ethically in an adversary system to ensure that integrity. When lawyers file legal claims containing sensational allegations, the fact that lawyers filed them gives at least some credibility to the purportedly factual allegations they contain.
The filing of those lawsuits and others like them had a role in sowing doubt about the election’s integrity--even after the suits were dismissed. And there can be little question that the doubt they inspired had an impact on events that occurred in the tumultuous months that followed the November election.
Now, though, the reckoning has begun. This week in Michigan, United States District Court Judge Linda V. Parker imposed substantial sanctions on Sydney Powell, L. Lin Wood, and seven other lawyers for their roles in filing a November 25, 2020 lawsuit asking for a declaration that Donald Trump had won the Michigan presidential election. Before imposing her specific sanctions, Judge Parker summarized what that lawsuit was about.
“This lawsuit,” she wrote, “represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process. It is one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election. It is another to take on the charge of deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated. This is what happened here.” And, as she emphasized, "…this case was never about fraud – it was about undermining the People's faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so."
Lawyers Defending American Democracy applauds Judge Parker’s decision and her 110 pages of detailed, clear, and carefully crafted findings showing that Powell, Wood, and the others who filed the complaint knew that they had no basis for the claims they were making. Indeed, so clearly did they know the baseless nature of their allegations that, as Judge Parker observed, each one of them filed motions in the sanction proceedings to distance themselves, claiming that they had had no responsibility for the allegations they asserted in their complaint.
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