More Pro-Trump Lawyers Sanctioned For BS Election Fraud Lawsuits

Legal Issues

from the keep-it-coming,-judges dept

It’s not just headliners like L. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell getting sanctioned for pursuing bullshit election fraud lawsuits. Other grifting asshats with Esq. on their letterhead are getting benchslapped for abusing the court system to pursue political goals, utilizing nothing more than speculation and wild conspiracy theories as “evidence.”

The lawyers behind a ridiculous lawsuit filed in Colorado have just been sanctioned by a federal judge. The opening of the sanction order [PDF] makes a valiant effort to succinctly sum up the litigation that has resulted in punishment, but there’s just so much going on. Enjoy (?) the following craziness:

This lawsuit arises out of the 2020 election for President of the United States. The original Complaint (Dkt. #1) purported to be a class action lawsuit on behalf of all American registered voters, alleging a vast conspiracy between four governors, secretaries of state, and various election officials of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia; along with Dominion, a private supplier of election and voting technology; the social media company Facebook; CTCL, a non-profit organization dedicated to making elections more secure and inclusive; as well as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

Three private companies and four different states were named as defendants. Colorado, however, was not one of those states, which does nothing to explain why the plaintiffs pursued this case in a Colorado federal court.

The court doesn’t know why this was pursued in Colorado either. Or why it was pursued at all. The lawsuit clearly had no merit from the moment it was filed.

I use the words “vast conspiracy” purposefully. The Complaint is one enormous conspiracy theory. And a conspiracy is what the original Complaint, all 84 pages and 409-plus paragraphs, alleged: that “the Defendants engaged in concerted action to interfere with the 2020 presidential election through a coordinated effort to, among other things, change voting laws without legislative approval, use unreliable voting machines, alter votes through an illegitimate adjudication process, provide illegal methods of voting, count illegal votes, suppress the speech of opposing voices, disproportionally and privately fund only certain municipalities and counties, and other methods, all prohibited by the Constitution.”

This summation is immediately followed by a huge understatement.

So, this was not a normal case in any sense.

No, this was not normal. It was, in fact, dangerous. It aimed to undermine the democratic process. And it helped pave the way for actual violence.

In short, this was no slip-and-fall at the local grocery store. Albeit disorganized and fantastical, the Complaint’s allegations are extraordinarily serious and, if accepted as true by large numbers of people, are the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.

The plaintiffs were far from credible, and claimed to speak for 160 million “similarly situated” voters. Except that most voters, given the choice, would have nothing to do with these self-appointed representatives.

The personal affidavits Plaintiffs attached to the original Complaint recount the generalized fear and suspicion that the “system” is rigged, and a sense that American democracy no longer works. The affidavits are notable only in demonstrating no firsthand knowledge by any Plaintiff of any election fraud, misconduct, or malfeasance. Instead, Plaintiffs’ affidavits are replete with conclusory statements about what must have happened during the election and Plaintiffs’ “beliefs” that the election was corrupted, presumably based on rumors, innuendo, and unverified and questionable media reports.

Here’s just one of the affidavits the lawyers advancing this case delivered as evidence supporting their “vast conspiracy” claims.

I believe that there was widespread vote fraud and manipulation during the 2020 Presidential Election and as such, this topic, along with the vaccination topic, along with the Qanon topic, as well as other ‘controversial topics,’ should not be censored, ‘fact checked,’ deleted and/or result in a ban or permanent account deletion just because the topic at hand challenges the official narrative as presented in mainstream media, the Democrat Party, the liability-free vaccine industry and other domestic and foreign controlling interests. the liability-free vaccine industry and other domestic and foreign controlling interests.

Basically, the legal team collected affidavits that did little more than demonstrate what Facebook would be like if it was any worse as content moderation. And submitting individual conspiracy theories as supportive evidence for the larger conspiracy theory didn’t make the lawsuit any more credible or give the plaintiffs any standing to pursue it.

Despite the numerous additional plaintiffs and the addition of RICO conspiracy claims, nothing about the proposed Amended Complaint addressed one critical deficiency emphasized in all Defendants’ dismissal motions: Plaintiffs’ lack of standing to bring suit under Article III of the Constitution. Also absent from the proposed Amended Complaint was any effort to address the conspicuous personal jurisdictional problems raised by suing, in federal court in Colorado, state government officials from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan, for acts taken in connection with their official duties in those respective states.

Trying to duck sanctions, the lawyers tried to argue this lawsuit was different than similar, already dismissed “election fraud” lawsuits filed elsewhere in the nation. Wrong, says the court, using their own words against them.

Plaintiffs’ effort to distinguish this case from what I referred to as a “veritable tsunami” of adverse precedent (Dkt. #92 at 17) was not just unpersuasive but crossed the border into the frivolous. Plaintiffs argued, first, that this lawsuit was against corporations, not state actors or agencies, making it somehow qualitatively different from the many other dismissed election suits. This argument ignores that, as filed, this suit was brought against several state government officials who, the original Complaint made clear, were acting under color of state law.

Go back to law school, grifters.

It should have been as obvious to Plaintiffs’ counsel as it would be to a first-year civil procedure student that there was no legal or factual basis to assert personal jurisdiction in Colorado for actions taken by sister states’ governors, secretaries of state, or other election officials, in those officials’ home states.

Maybe they should have let a 1L handle the litigation.

Filing a lawsuit against an out-of-state defendant with no plausible good faith justification for the assertion of personal jurisdiction or venue is sanctionable conduct.

Then there’s the matter of the allegations themselves. Lawyers filing lawsuits need to do so in good faith. Due diligence is expected. Extensive research is expected before filing lawsuits like these — ones that aren’t necessarily time sensitive and likely would have benefitted from a cooling off period that would have allowed the plaintiffs to perhaps be dissuaded by the inability of multiple investigations to uncover any evidence of election fraud.

Then again, this suit was never about the plaintiffs or arguments made in good faith. This was a performance, conceived and delivered by disingenuous lawyers, who, hopefully now, regret that decision.

It must also be noted that this was not a client-driven lawsuit. As Plaintiffs’ counsel, Mr. Fielder, conceded at the July 16 hearing, the lawsuit was his idea. Mr. Fielder and Mr. Walker were not relying on information from the named Plaintiffs to construct the suit or for any of the substantive factual allegations. Lawyers who conceive of a lawsuit seeking $160 billion dollars, making allegations questioning the validity of a Presidential election, and the fairness of the basic mechanisms of American democracy, must conduct extensive independent research and investigation into the validity of the claims before filing suit.

Sloppy due diligence is one thing. Constructing a complaint from debunked arguments, speculative hearsay, dismissed lawsuits, and the rantings of Donald J. Trump is quite another.

Plaintiffs’ counsel were (or should have been) on notice before filing the original Complaint, prior to the attempted amendment, and subsequently, that all of these allegations were heavily disputed, that none had been accepted as true or verified by any government agency or court, that independent investigations by reputable news sources had found no evidence to support the allegations, and that many had been comprehensively rebutted by authoritative sources. This should have put Plaintiffs’ counsel on high alert about the need to do significant independent due diligence before cutting and pasting from failed lawsuits, or, worse, directly copying into a federal lawsuit the ex-President’s Tweets claiming that the election was fraudulently stolen.

These sanctions are well-earned, says the court.

This lawsuit was filed with a woeful lack of investigation into the law and (under the circumstances) the facts. The lawsuit put into or repeated into the public record highly inflammatory and damaging allegations that could have put individuals’ safety in danger. Doing so without a valid legal basis or serious independent personal investigation into the facts was the height of recklessness.

The recklessness is described. In detail.

Plaintiffs’ counsel should have spoken to some of the other lawyers whose complaints they were copying into this lawsuit. Plaintiffs’ counsel should have confronted the authors of those failed lawsuits with evidence and public information that seemed to refute their claims to test their legitimacy. They should have done the same with the expert’s whose affidavits or reports they were citing.

Instead, Plaintiffs’ counsel spoke to no one.

It’s a grift.

Similarly, Mr. Fielder and Mr. Walker could have spent some of the $95,000 they raised from the public to fund this litigation on an expert or three to assess and verify the truth of the information contained in the materials from other lawsuits which were copied into this Complaint. Rather than hiring an expert pre-filing, they spoke to no one.

Run by incompetents.

There is no evidence that Mr. Fielder or Mr. Walker have any experience or training in running elections or assessing the validity of elections. And yet, these lawyers were apparently relying in part on their own personal assessments of what happened on election night as support for the lawsuit’s claims.

Irresponsible, reckless, and dangerous.

Plaintiffs’ counsel copied into their Complaint inflammatory and damaging allegations from failed lawsuits and media reports. Plaintiffs’ counsel picked only the information, frequently from dubious sources, that supported their conspiracy theory, ignoring contrary available evidence, including statements from courts and non-partisan government agencies. They did not take any independent steps to verify the accuracy of the information by talking to actual human beings. The public statements from authoritative sources and courts rejecting allegations of widespread voter fraud or ballot-rigging should have been, if not bright red, at least flashing yellow lights warning Plaintiffs’ counsel to proceed with caution. Instead, they drove through the lights at full speed, even accelerating when it came to the Amended Complaint, which was filed after the January 6, 2021 insurrection that had been prompted, in part, by dangerous suggestions that the election had been stolen.

Both lawyers — Gary D. Felder and Ernest John Walker — will now be paying the legal fees of every defendant, including those voluntarily dismissed (the Pennsylvania parties). Hopefully this — along with sanctions being handed down elsewhere — will deter politically motivated lawyers from sucking up to lame duck presidents and attempting to undermine the democratic process the next time an election doesn’t go their way.

Filed Under: conspiracy theories, donald trump, elections, ernest john walker, frivolous lawsuits, gary felder, grifting, sanctions