Merrick Garland Needs to Show He Knows What Jan. 6 Was Really About

 

Merrick Garland Needs to Show He Knows What Jan. 6 Was Really About

July 18, 2021

 

 

By Donald Ayer, Danielle Brian and Norman Eisen

Mr. Ayer was a deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. Ms. Brian is the executive director of the Project On Government Oversight. Mr. Eisen served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment.

When Mo Brooks took his oath of office as a U.S. representative, he swore to support and defend the Constitution. His official duties certainly don’t include what Mr. Brooks is accused of doing in a civil lawsuit pending in Washington federal court: helping to incite a mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, sued Mr. Brooks, an Alabama Republican, and others for damages suffered as a result of their roles in the Capitol riot. Mr. Brooks has asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to certify that his actions on Jan. 6 were those of a government employee acting within the scope of his employment. The Justice Department must say if it will defend Mr. Brooks by July 27.

If the attorney general were to certify and the court agreed, Mr. Brooks would be dismissed from the lawsuit under a federal statute. The United States would be substituted as a defendant instead.

Mr. Garland’s choice is important in its own right, but it also carries ramifications for cases targeting possible official wrongdoing in the Trump era, including by the former president himself. Mr. Garland should emphatically reject Mr. Brooks’s request to make this certification, because our nation deserves a full accounting for those involved in the storming of the Capitol and any other assaults on our democracy.

The case arises from Mr. Brooks’s appearance at the “Save America” rally in Washington on Jan. 6. All Americans are entitled to petition their government under the Constitution.

But in our view, Mr. Brooks’s instructions went beyond these protections. He urged the assembled crowd to “fight for America” and “stop” at the Capitol, where the electoral transition would take place. “Today the curtain will be pulled back and American patriots will learn by their votes which Republican senators and congressmen have the courage to fight for America,” Mr. Brooks said. “Today Republican senators and congressmen will either vote to turn America into a godless, amoral, dictatorial, oppressed and socialist nation on the decline or they will join us and they will fight and vote against voter fraud and election theft and vote for keeping America great.” He added, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” (In response to the suit, Mr. Brooks said he was talking in his speech about the 2022 and 2024 elections.)

We all know what happened next.

Determining when arguably wrongful conduct by a federal employee nonetheless occurred within the scope of his or her employment duties often involves a difficult exercise of judgment. The issue is not whether the employee committed a wrongful act — bad things can happen on the job. At the same time, not everything an employee does is within the scope of his job — as in the case of a mail carrier who takes his delivery vehicle on a joy ride far from his route and hits a pedestrian. Because Congress has expressly made the United States directly responsible for the wrongs of employees while they are doing their jobs, the attorney general and his delegates generally construe the scope of employment concept broadly (some would say too broadly to allow real bad actors in government jobs to be held to account).

For example, the Justice Department recently certified scope of employment in a suit brought by former Ambassador Gordon Sondland against former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleging that Mr. Pompeo reneged on a promise to cover Mr. Sondland’s impeachment-related legal fees. Whatever the merits of Mr. Sondland’s claims, the judgment whether to reimburse seems to be within the scope of Mr. Pompeo’s powers as secretary.

More controversially, during the last year of the Trump administration, the journalist E. Jean Carroll sued Mr. Trump in a state court in New York, alleging that Mr. Trump had defamed her in connection with allegations of rape she made in a 2019 book. The Justice Department certified that the disputed statements were made within the scope of Mr. Trump’s employment as president and William Barr moved the lawsuit to federal court. The court didn’t buy it, rightly holding that Mr. Trump’s statements have “no relationship to the official business of the United States.” The Justice Department appealed that ruling, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has elected to pursue the appeal and leave the ultimate decision on this issue to the court.

There can be no doubt that the case of Mr. Brooks’s behavior at the Jan. 6 rally is a very different kettle of fish.

For starters, House rules exclude broad categories of conduct from official duties; they include partisan campaigning or political activities like the dark money and privately funded event on Jan. 6. It is difficult to imagine an act that falls farther outside the scope of a sitting congressman’s official duties than what he is accused of doing: helping to provoke a crowd to lay siege on the center of our federal government, putting his fellow members at risk of physical harm and ultimately disrupting the vital constitutional process of certifying presidential election results.

The Constitution and laws of the United States are not, as Justice Robert Jackson once warned, a suicide pact. Certification that Mr. Brooks acted within the scope of his job would leave the United States government defending the right of its elected representatives to foment insurrection against itself.

The decision before the Justice Department could also have an impact on other cases, including those against Mr. Trump. He, too, is a defendant in Representative Swalwell’s suit over his incitement at the same rally. If Mr. Brooks is immunized, how long before Mr. Trump seeks the same? There is also the Georgia criminal investigation of Mr. Trump’s efforts to have state officials “find 11,780 votes.” He surely would point to any precedent Mr. Garland set here to argue that that was official, too. Who knows what other yet-to-be revealed conduct would be swept within this new safe harbor for wrongdoing?

Our future depends on our resolve in adhering to our basic democratic values — among them, that truth is a key to the functioning of our electoral system. And that demands that Attorney General Garland unequivocally reject any notion that a congressman is doing his job when he foments a riot based on lies in order to sabotage a legitimate national electoral process.

Donald Ayer, a former U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, is an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law. Danielle Brian is the executive director of the Project On Government Oversight. Norman Eisen, executive chairman of the States United Democracy Center, was President Barack Obama’s ethics czar and ambassador to the Czech Republic, and served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment.

THE DISINFORMATION DOZEN account for up to 73% of Facebook’s anti-vaxx content

 

THE DISINFORMATION DOZEN

Introduction

We are in the middle of the deadliest US public health crisis in more than a century. Covid-19 has killed more than 500,000 Americans and undermined the livelihood of millions of American workers and families. The virus has had a particularly devastating impact on Black, Latino, and Native American communities, all of whom are suffering severe illness and death from COVID-19 at rates far greater than the general population.

Compounding this crisis, vaccination rates in communities of color have also lagged those for whites, and skepticism and distrust of the vaccines are greater in these marginalized communities.

With widespread distribution of coronavirus vaccines, we have an opportunity to turn a corner on the pandemic. Our recovery depends on the public’s willingness to receive a vaccine. However, researchers are increasingly connecting misinformation disseminated via social media to increased vaccine hesitancy, which will ultimately cause unnecessary deaths.

Living in full view of the public on the internet are a small group of individuals who do not have relevant medical expertise and have their own pockets to line, who are abusing social media platforms to misrepresent the threat of Covid and spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines. According to our recent report, anti-vaccine activists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter reach more than 59 million followers, making these the largest and most important social media platforms for anti-vaxxers.

Our research has also found anti-vaxxers using social media platforms to target Black Americans, exploiting higher rates of vaccine hesitancy in that community to spread conspiracies and lies about the safety of Covid vaccines.

Facebook, Google and Twitter have put policies into place to prevent the spread of vaccine misinformation; yet to date, all have failed to satisfactorily enforce those policies. All have been particularly ineffective at removing harmful and dangerous misinformation about coronavirus vaccines, though the scale of misinformation on Facebook, and thus the impact of their failure, is larger.

Further, they have all failed to remove the accounts of prominent anti-vaxxers who have repeatedly violated their terms of service, as documented in later sections of this report.

Executive Summary

1. The Disinformation Dozen are twelve anti-vaxxers who play leading roles in spreading digital misinformation about Covid vaccines. They were selected because they have large numbers of followers, produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or have seen rapid growth of their social media accounts in the last two months.

2. Analysis of a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter a total of 812,000 times between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.

3. Despite repeatedly violating Facebook, Instagram and Twitter’s terms of service agreements, nine of the Disinformation Dozen remain on all three platforms, while just three have been comprehensively removed from just one platform.

4. This is the product of a series of failures from social media platforms:

a. Research conducted by CCDH last year has shown that platforms fail to act on 95 percent of the Covid and vaccine misinformation reported to them.

b. CCDH’s recent report, Malgorithm, uncovered evidence that Instagram’s algorithm actively recommends similar misinformation.

c. Tracking of 425 anti-vaccine accounts by CCDH shows that their total following across platforms now stood at 59.2 million in December, an increase of 877,000 more than they had in June.

d. CCDH’s ongoing tracking shows that the 20 anti-vaxxers with the largest followings account for over two-thirds of this total cross-platform following of 59.2 million.

5. Analysis of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook over 689,000 times in the last two months shows that up to 73 percent of that content originates with members of the Disinformation Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers.

6. Facebook’s own internal analysis of vaccine hesitant content on its platform is likely to underestimate the influence of leading anti-vaxxers by failing to address the ultimate source of this content, and by the recorded failure of its algorithms to identify content concerning vaccines.

7. Analysis of over 120,000 anti-vaccine tweets collected in the last two months shows that up to 17 percent feature the Disinformation Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers.

8. The most effective and efficient way to stop the dissemination of harmful information is to deplatform the most highly visible repeat offenders, who we term the Disinformation Dozen. This should also include the organisations these individuals control or fund, as well as any backup accounts they have established to evade removal.

9. Platforms should establish a clear threshold for enforcement action, such as two strikes, after which restrictions are applied to accounts short of deplaforming them.

10. Users should be presented with warning screens when attempting to follow links to sites known to host vaccine misinformation, and users exposed to posts containing misinformation should be shown effective corrections.

11. Facebook should not allow private and secret anti-vaccine Groups where dangerous anti-vaccine disinformation can be spread with impunity.

The Disinformation Dozen are responsible for up to 65% of antivaccine content

At the outset of this research, we identified a dozen individuals who appeared to be extremely influential creators of digital anti-vaccine content. These individuals were selected either because they run anti-vaccine social media accounts with large numbers of followers, because they produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or because their growth was accelerating rapidly at the outset of our research in February. Full profiles of each are available at the end of this report.

1. Joseph Mercola

2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger

4. Sherri Tenpenny

5. Rizza Islam

6. Rashid Buttar

7. Erin Elizabeth

8. Sayer Ji

9. Kelly Brogan

10. Christiane Northrup

11. Ben Tapper

12. Kevin Jenkins

Our analysis of over 812,000 posts extracted from Facebook and Twitter between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.

This shows that while many people might spread anti-vaccine content on social media platforms, the content they share often comes from a much more limited range of sources. Exposure to even a small amount of online vaccine misinformation has been shown by the Vaccine Confidence Project to reduce the number of people willing to take a Covid vaccine by up to 8.8 percent.

Platforms have failed to act on the Disinformation Dozen Despite repeatedly violating Facebook, Instagram and Twitter’s terms of service agreements, nine of the Disinformation Dozen remain on all three platforms, while just three have been comprehensively removed from just one platform.

This is an extension of platforms’ failure to act on vaccine misinformation. Research conducted by CCDH last year has shown that platforms fail to act on 95 percent of the Covid and vaccine misinformation reported to them, and we have uncovered evidence that Instagram’s algorithm actively recommends similar misinformation.

Tracking of 425 anti-vaccine accounts by CCDH shows that their total following across platforms now stands at 59.2 million as a result of these failures. The 20 anti-vaxxers with the largest followings account for over two-thirds of this total.

The Disinformation Dozen account for up to 73% of Facebook’s anti-vaxx content

Analysis of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook over 689,000 times in the last two months shows that up to 73 percent of that content originates with members of the Disinformation Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers.

This analysis is based on a representative sample of 483 pieces of anti-vaccine content that are known to be circulating in anti-vaccine Facebook Groups. We collected this sample by analyzing anti-vaccine posts containing URL links from 10 private and 20 public anti-vaccine Facebook Groups between 1 February and 16 March 2021.

Groups in this sample have between 2,500 and 235,000 members and generate up to 10,000 posts per month. Researchers then analyzed the content of these URL links, tagging each of them to indicate whether they contained a member of the Disinformation Dozen or originated from a website controlled by or related to one of those members.

For example, URL links to articles hosted on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense website were attributed to Kennedy, Jr.

Finally, in order to establish the full distribution of this content on Facebook, we used Facebook’s own CrowdTangle analytics tool to establish how many times these URLs have been shared on the platform. This revealed that the anti-vaccine content in our sample had been posted or shared across Facebook a total of 689,404 times.

Content attributed to members of the Disinformation Dozen had been posted or shared 503,896 times, representing 73.1 percent of the total anti-vaccine posts represented by our sample.

ANOTHER TRUMP SCUMBAG AND WEASEL

 

Trump’s ‘Team Kraken’ Lands in Hot Water

July 15, 2021

 

L. Lin Wood.

 

By Michelle Cottle

Ms. Cottle is a member of the editorial board.

L. Lin Wood played a starring role in the failed legal effort to alter the results of the 2020 election on behalf of former President Donald Trump. But Mr. Wood, a lawyer, now wants everyone to know that he had no real involvement in the suit to decertify the vote in Michigan, despite his name appearing on it.

“I do not specifically recall being asked about the Michigan complaint,” he said on Monday, “but I had generally indicated to Sidney Powell that if she needed a quote-unquote trial lawyer, I would certainly be willing or available to help her.” Ms. Powell, you may recall, is the legal eagle who vowed to “release the Kraken” on supposed 2020 election fraudsters, thus earning the pro-Trump legal crusade its mythic nickname.

Mr. Wood was just trying to support his Kraken co-counsel.

Mr. Wood’s, um, clarifications were made to a federal judge during a hearing on whether he, Ms. Powell and several other lawyers should be sanctioned over the Michigan case. The city of Detroit, among other entities, has accused the pro-Trump legal team of abusing the court system by pursuing a frivolous, error-riddled case. The city wants the offending lawyers punished financially and referred for possible disbarment.

 

Monday’s virtual proceedings did not bode well for Team Kraken. U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker expressed skepticism bordering on dismay about some of the evidence and experts from the original case. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an affidavit that has made so many leaps,” she marveled at one point. “How could any of you as officers of the court present this affidavit?”

Generally speaking, it’s not a good sign when a judge is characterizing one’s evidence in terms such as “fantastical,” “speculative,” “bad faith,” “obviously questionable” and “layers of hearsay.” Judge Parker brushed back Ms. Powell’s assertion that the complaint’s 960 pages of affidavits proved “due diligence,” countering, “Volume, certainly for this court, doesn’t equate with legitimacy or veracity.”

The hearing ground on for six hours, with so much back talk and smack talk that the court reporter had to ask the participants to tone things down so that she could do her job. At day’s end, all parties were given two weeks to submit additional arguments.

Mr. Wood was not the only defendant eager to downplay his role. The lawyer for Emily Newman, another member of the Michigan Kraken team, said his client spent a mere five hours on the case and that her role was “de minimis.” More generally, the defendants maintain that the entire hearing is outrageous and baseless and — surprise! — that they are being unjustly persecuted. “I have practiced law for 43 years and have never witnessed a proceeding like this,” Ms. Powell said.

But here’s where the political and legal paths diverge for those perpetuating Mr. Trump’s election lies. The legal world has ethical, professional standards by which members are expected to abide. When they violate said standards, they can’t simply whine or bluster their way out of trouble with partisan demagogy. They need to justify their actions to judges and professional groups who have a clear grasp of the issues — and who deal with slick talkers for a living.

This is the situation in which Team Kraken and some other Trump legal enablers find themselves. Michigan is just one of several states where suits are underway against the lawyers who pursued baseless election-fraud complaints. Last month, a New York appellate court suspended the law license of Rudy Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive apparatchiks, for making “demonstrably false and misleading statements” about the 2020 election. The Texas bar is looking into whether the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, committed professional misconduct in challenging the election results. The state bar of Georgia, where Mr. Wood’s practice is based, is investigating his behavior.

No doubt, the legal system hosts an abundance of carnival barkers and political hacks. Just this week, Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign legal adviser, announced her departure from the Republican Party, accusing its leaders of failing to stand up for Mr. Trump and for “true conservatives.” She is particularly miffed at the Republican National Committee’s chief legal counsel, Justin Riemer, for having reportedly spoken ill of her push to invalidate the 2020 results. “What Rudy and Jenna are doing is a joke and they are getting laughed out of court,” Mr. Riemer wrote in a November email, according to a new book by Michael Wolff. “They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing.”

Ms. Ellis has demanded the resignation of top party officials, including Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C.’s chairwoman, and says she will not return to the fold until the party “comes back home to conservatives.”

Such theatrics may thrill MAGA fans — and even more so the former president. But they are unlikely to sway jurists or other arbiters tasked with reviewing the behavior of officers of the court.

Mr. Trump’s alternative facts hold less sway over some realms than others.

 

THANK GOD WE HAVE SOME REAL HEROES IN WASHINGTON WHO STOOD UP TO TRUMP

 THANK GOD WE HAVE SOME REAL HEROES IN WASHINGTON WHO STOOD UP TO TRUMP 

   Top generals mobilized on fears

 Trump wanted military 

post-election coup

Rebecca Shabad and Leigh Ann Caldwell and Jesse Rodriguez and Courtney Kube

Thu, July 15, 2021, 

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, worried that then-President Donald Trump would try to use the military to attempt a coup after the 2020 election and vowed to prevent it.

That’s according to a new book by Washington Post reporters Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig, “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” which will be released next week. The book, excerpts of which were obtained by NBC News, attributes the accounts of private conversations between military and government officials to myriad unnamed sources, including aides to those involved.

Trump issued a statement Thursday denying that he had ever considered a coup and criticizing Milley, whom he said he appointed only because people he disliked had in turn disliked the general.

"So ridiculous! Sorry to inform you, but an Election is my form of 'coup,' and if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley," Trump said.

Col. Dave Butler, a spokesperson for Milley, declined to comment on the reporting in the book.

Many of the events surrounding the final weeks of Trump's presidency played out in public, including the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, as supporters of the former president attacked the building in an effort to prevent his defeat from being finalized.

But a recent series of new books have offered details about the behind-the-scenes efforts, including that many who remained inside the administration worried about the stability of the government.

The new details come as Trump has re-emerged into public life, holding recent rallies and increasing the frequency of his media appearances and written statements. He was scheduled to meet Thursday with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., a meeting the lawmaker's office said was to discuss the 2022 election.

“They may try” but won't succeed, Milley told his deputies about a possible coup, according to the book. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.”

The authors wrote that Milley and his deputies feared that people close to Trump would advise him to take rash military action such as launching an armed strike, quickly withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan or deploying troops in a way that was related to the election results.

Milley and the heads of each branch of the military began “informally planning how they could block a presidential order to use the military in a way they considered illegal, or dangerous and ill-advised,” the book said.

Worried about potential disruptions, Milley, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began having regular calls, the authors wrote.

A senior official told the authors the theme of their calls was to ensure there would be a peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden on Jan. 20.

On Jan. 7, the day after the attack on the Capitol, the three spoke, describing Trump as emotional and angry and asserting that they lacked other allies besides Pat Cipollone, then the White House counsel.

Milley attended the inaugural ceremony for Biden, sitting behind former President Barack Obama.

Former first lady Michelle Obama asked how Milley was feeling.

“No one has a bigger smile today than I do,” he told her, the authors wrote. “You can’t see it under my mask, but I do.”

Let's not forget this lying dirtbag either...

 

Let's not forget this lying dirtbag either...

Judge eyes sanctions on pro-Trump lawyers who claimed voter fraud

Jan Wolfe

David Thomas

WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday appeared likely to reprimand Sidney Powell, a former campaign lawyer for Donald Trump, and other attorneys over a lawsuit they filed in Michigan seeking to overturn Democratic President Joe Biden's election victory.

U.S. District Judge Linda Parker in Detroit suggested the pro-Trump lawyers should have investigated the Republican former president's voter fraud claims more carefully before suing.

"Should an attorney be sanctioned for his or her failure to withdraw allegations the attorney came to know were untrue?," Parker said during a court hearing via video conference. "Is that sanctionable behavior?"

She said she thought affidavits in the case had been submitted in "bad faith."

Parker held the hearing to determine whether Powell, Lin Wood and other pro-Trump lawyers should be disciplined for a lawsuit they filed last November that made baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the U.S. presidential election in Michigan.

They are not the only lawyers allied with Trump to land in hot water for supporting his false claims that his election defeat was the result of fraud. New York state and Washington, D.C., in recent weeks suspended former New York City Mayor and Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani's law license after finding he lied in supporting Trump's claims.

Parker dismissed the Michigan lawsuit last December, saying in a written decision that Powell's voter fraud claims were "nothing but speculation and conjecture" and that, in any event, the Texas lawyer waited too long to file her lawsuit.

'REALLY FANTASTICAL'

Parker did not rule during the hearing on whether she would impose judicial sanctions on Powell, of Dallas, and her co-counsel, or refer them to a regulatory body for disbarment proceedings. She said she would issue a written ruling "in due course."

But she spent a large portion of the hearing grilling Powell and the other attorneys on whether they vetted affidavits claiming voter fraud in Michigan before filing them in federal court.

"I don't think I've ever seen an affidavit that makes so many leaps. This is really fantastical," Parker said. "So my question to counsel here is: How could any of you as officers of the court present this affidavit?"

Powell asserted the hundreds of pages of affidavits showed they had conducted due diligence, and that the only way to test them would have been at trial or a hearing on evidence they have gathered. Her co-counsel repeatedly called for such an evidentiary hearing.

Starting in January, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and other government lawyers asked the judge to discipline the pro-Trump lawyers, saying they had filed a frivolous lawsuit full of typos and factual errors and should be held accountable.

"What they filed was an embarrassment to the legal profession," David Fink, a lawyer for the city of Detroit, said during Monday's hearing. "This was a sloppy and careless effort."

Powell represented Trump's campaign when he tried to overturn last Nov. 3's presidential election in the courts. His campaign distanced itself from Powell after she claimed without evidence at a Nov. 19 news conference that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots to Biden.

On Nov. 25, a team of lawyers led by Powell filed a lawsuit on behalf of Michigan Republicans alleging rampant voter fraud. They also sought to have Trump named the winner of the Midwestern state's election, giving him Michigan's votes in the U.S. Electoral College, which formally elects the winner of presidential races.

During the hearing, Parker asked Powell and her co-counsel why they did not voluntarily dismiss their Michigan case on Dec. 14 when the Electoral College confirmed Biden's victory.

"Why did the plaintiffs not recognize this lawsuit as moot and dismiss it on that date?," Parker asked.

Donald Campbell, a Michigan attorney representing Powell and the other lawyers, replied that the election was "fluid" and unpredictable and that the pro-Trump legal team believed its lawsuit was still viable after Dec. 14.

Opinion: A legal reckoning may be coming for the lawyers who helped Trump push election lies 

 

Opinion by the  

Editorial Board 

July 14, 2021|Updated yesterday at 4:15 p.m. EDT 

 

"There’s a duty that counsel has that when you’re submitting a sworn statement . . . that you have reviewed it, that you had done some minimal due diligence.” You might expect to hear that statement in a first-year law school class. Instead, it was made by a federal court judge in Michigan during an extraordinary court session that underscored the irresponsibility of lawyers who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Unlike for former president Donald Trump and other politicians who lie with seeming impunity, there may be real consequences for the lawyers who helped him peddle his spurious claims about election fraud. 

 

U.S. District Court Judge Linda V. Parker held a nearly six-hour hearing on Monday to determine whether nine pro-Trump lawyers, including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood, should be disciplined for making unverified arguments in a lawsuit that sought to decertify President Biden’s victory and declare Mr. Trump the winner of Michigan’s 16 electoral votes. The judge said she will rule later this summer, but her brutal questioning left little doubt about the recklessness of the attorneys’ actions. 

 

The judge noted that one witness said in an affidavit filed with the lawsuit that she believed she saw election workers switching votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden. Had any of the lawyers spoken to the witness, the judge asked, to determine exactly what she saw that led her to believe that votes had been switched? There was silence. “Anyone?” she asked again, and when there was still no answer she said: “Let the record reflect that no one made that inquiry, which was central to [the] allegation.” It was rich seeing some attorneys who enthusiastically promoted suspicions last fall and winter try to distance themselves now. Mr. Wood said he had no involvement in preparing the lawsuit even though his name was on the court papers. An attorney for Emily Newman described her role as “de minimis . . . a contract lawyer working from home who spent maybe five hours on this matter.” 

 

Lawyers are required by legal rules and federal law to be truthful in court and avoid filing cases “unreasonably and vexatiously.” If Judge Parker decides to sanction the lawyers, she could require them to pay the legal costs of the other parties in the lawsuit, assess additional monetary penalties or recommend grievance proceedings that could lead to them being banned from practicing law in Michigan or their disbarment. Mr. Trump’s most prominent legal advocate, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has had his license to practice law in New York state and Washington, D.C., suspended as a result of his comments in connection with election-related litigation. He faces disbarment in pending disciplinary proceedings. 

 

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has set up shop at his golf club in New Jersey, where he blithely continues to repeat his fiction about a stolen election, a lie that his Republican political allies are all too willing help spread. It will be up to voters to hold them accountable for their abuse of the political system, but the court in Michigan has an opportunity to send a message about abusing the legal system.