Lawyers retreat from pro-Trump election suit - POLITICO

By JOSH GERSTEIN07/12/2021 10:27 AM EDTUpdated: 07/12/2021 04:49 PM EDTLink CopiedThe legal reckoning for attorneys who pushed former President Donald Trump’s spurious claims of election fraud advanced on Monday, with a federal court in Detroit holding a hearing on whether to impose sanctions over a suit filed last year seeking to decertify Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan and declare Trump the winner.Two of the most prominent attorneys in the pro-Trump camp — Dallas-based Sidney Powell and Atlanta-based L. Lin Wood — are among the lawyers who brought the unsuccessful suit and whose conduct is under scrutiny by U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker.Another pair of attorneys facing possible sanctions in the case, Emily Newman and Julia Haller, served in a variety of Trump administration posts but appear to have left government late last year to aid Powell in the post-election litigation.Parker’s tone during the hearing — which stretched to more than six hours — indicated that at least some of the lawyers involved in filing and pursuing the suit were likely to face sanctions from the court, although she did not say what kind of punishment she was mulling.As the hearing opened Monday via videoconference, several lawyers sought to minimize their roles in the litigation. At Monday’s hearing, Parker sparred with Donald Campbell, an attorney representing most of the pro-Trump lawyers involved, and with Howard Kleinhendler, one of those lawyers.The judge continued to sound deeply skeptical about the pro-Trump lawyers’ case, referring to some of the witnesses they relied upon as “purported experts” and arguing that their filings contained obvious flaws.“The court is concerned that these affidavits were submitted in bad faith,” Parker said. Audio or video recording of court sessions, even those streamed on the internet, is against court rules.The State of Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic National Committee and the Michigan Democratic Party, who were all involved in the case, are also backing the effort to punish the pro-Trump attorneys involved in the suit.Fink said the misstatements in the court filings, like a claim that 139 percent of registered voters in Detroit cast ballots, had grave consequences. However, last week, Powell, Wood and five other lawyers asked to appear solely through other lawyers retained to represent them.Parker rejected that request without explanation, but did indicate that the pro-Trump attorneys could attend the hearing “virtually.” She issued no ruling at Monday’s hearing and gave the various lawyers involved two weeks to present further written arguments to the court.Fallout from the dozens of post-election lawsuits continues in other courts and legal venues, resulting in major professional headaches for many of the lawyers involved.In February, the Georgia State Bar sent Wood a 1,600-plus-page complaint proposing bar discipline against him.