[ad_1]
As President Donald Trump and his allies continue their legal roadblock to quash the presidential election despite a succession of adverse rulings, some local and state election officials are starting to cry foul.
In Michigan on Thursday, Republican lawyers were back in court to request an audit of election results in the heavily Democratic county that is home to Detroit – even after the state Supreme Court had already dismissed an earlier request by the same group aiming to discontinue certification. An exasperated city lawyer begged the judge to do something.
“They are trying to use this court in a very, very inappropriate way,” said City of Detroit lawyer David Fink. “We ask this tribunal not only to deny the relief sought, but also to grant significant penalties, because this must stop.”
The lawyer for the Trump poll watchers hit back, “I didn’t realize I was such a threat to our republic by simply asking this court to uphold our constitutional right.”
The Michigan case is not isolated, and opponents say they are starting to view the relentless effort as abusive. In the past week, at least five new cases have been filed on behalf of the president. Between the Trump campaign and the president’s allies, there are now at least 46 lawsuits filed against the 2020 presidential competition – many using the same recycled fraud allegations and witness affidavits.
And if more and more cases end up on court books with glaring errors or what the judges described as anemic evidence, legal experts told ABC News that even some slow-moving judges might fail to see no choice but to impose sanctions.
“You could see a court say, ‘Enough is enough,’ said Daniel I. Weiner, deputy director of the electoral reform program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
A “ post-truth environment ”
It’s nearly impossible to predict if and when the lawsuit storm may cross a line and be found to be abusive by a court, a number of legal experts have told ABC News, but some say it now seems possible. New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, an ethics expert, said there was a time when a plaintiff could face a reprimand, especially if cases are repeatedly dismissed as unsupported by the facts – as has happened repeatedly in Trump’s case.
“Judges have the inherent power to impose monetary penalties on lawyers who abuse the court system by making claims for which they have no reasonable factual or legal basis,” Gillers said. “Is it often done? No. Is it unheard of?
Charles Gardner Geyh, professor of law at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University, said he found it distressing to see the president “exporting this post-truth environment” to the courtroom. But he doubts the courts will go so far as to sanction lawyers who contest the elections, however scant the evidence.
Judges “don’t want to be seen as overtly political,” Geyh said. “If they go after the lawyers who represent the president as a ton of bricks, they know how it will be seen.”
‘Weirdly extreme’
The only possible exception to that, Geyh said, is Sidney Powell, the increasingly inflammatory lawyer the president fired from his legal team 13 days ago. Powell has filed a succession of unsubstantiated lawsuits related to the plot challenging the election result that plagued even some of Trump’s longtime allies. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a confidant of the president, called the far-fetched legal claims “national embarrassment.”
Geyh said Powell’s cases – which allege a global election-rigging plot involving foreign oligarchs, Venezuelan dictators and a Colorado-based voting machine company – are “strangely extreme.”
“I think part of it will lead to discipline,” he said.
While judges have leeway to sanction attorneys during court proceedings, Weiner said the job of overseeing attorney conduct falls more generally to state bar associations. If lawyers engage in “truly reckless or malicious conduct, you can violate bar rules,” he said.
On November 20, Representative Bill Pascrell, a Democrat from New Jersey, filed complaints to the bar in five states against nearly two dozen lawyers who worked on President Trump’s legal effort to challenge the election. In his letter of complaint, he alleged that the lawyers engaged in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deception or misrepresentation”.
Several legal experts have said Powell could be particularly vulnerable to penalties due to the number of errors in his filings – some of them glaring. Some of the most disturbing, they said, surfaced in an election challenge she filed in federal court in Wisconsin earlier this week.
In the case, Powell asked a Wisconsin judge to order the broadcast of 48 hours of security camera footage from the TCF Center – but the facility is actually in Michigan.
In another apparent blunder, one of the plaintiffs named by Powell – unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden – said the case was filed on his behalf without his knowledge or approval.
“I’m not a fan of people using my name without my permission,” Van Orden told ABC News after finding out about the lawsuit via social media. “Can you even do that?”
When asked about the error, Powell told ABC News. “I was informed by the lawyer who spoke to him that there was apparently a communication problem.” Van Orden’s name has since been removed from the case, and he told ABC News he has no plans to sue Powell.
“If I were his attorney, what I would say is cut,” said Gillers, the NYU expert. “Stop it, for you are on the road to radiation.”
‘Speculative accusations’
Trump’s legal team has argued in speeches, interviews and on social media that they have compelling evidence of fraud to back up their legal effort. But when they were pressured into bringing him to court, they were unable to deliver. For this, the president blamed the courts themselves.
“All we need is a judge to listen to it properly without having a political opinion or having any other kind of problem,” Trump said last week.
The judges saw it differently. U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann, a Republican, wrote that Trump’s legal documents presented only “speculative charges.” A person Trump appointed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Stephanos Bibas, was even less charitable, admonishing that “calling an election unfair doesn’t make it that way.”
“The charges require specific allegations and then evidence,” Bibas said, dismissing a prosecution by Trump. “We have neither here.”
Luke Barr of ABC News contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link