A federal judge in Colorado has ordered two Donald Trump-allied lawyers to pay a hefty fee for a lawsuit over the 2020 election that the judge had panned — and dismissed.
The December 2020 lawsuit was dismissed in AprilTwo Colorado lawyers brought the case on behalf of the plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit. of the nearly 160 million people who voted2020 election. They claimed that Dominion Voting Systems (Facebook), and other elected officials were involved in a plot by Trump to steal the election. However, no evidence supports this claim. The lawyers sought $160 million in damages.
Reports state that the judge dismissed the lawsuit. The Washington Post: “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.”
He ordered the duo pay $187,000To prevent similar cases from happening in the future, they will be paying legal fees. The judge sanctioned both lawyers earlier this summer. Dominion and Center for Tech and Civic Life were also named in the case.
“[T]he repetition of defamatory and potentially dangerous unverified allegations is the kind of ‘advocacy’ that needs to be chilled. Counsel should think long and hard, and do significant pre-filing research and verification, before ever filing a lawsuit like this again,” Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter wrote. “I believe that rather than a legitimate use of the legal system to seek redress for redressable grievances, this lawsuit has been used to manipulate gullible members of the public and foment public unrest.”
Two lawyers tried to appeal the order, but they claimed that the lawsuit had nothing whatsoever to do with Trump. The lawyers had filed an original document. quoted a Trump tweet falsely claiming that Dominion “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.”
There is no evidence that this conspiracy theory has been widely accepted by conservatives. This is almost entirely due to Trump and his team’s attempts to sow doubt about the election.
According to The Washington Post This ruling is the first attempt by a judge put a price tag to a punishment for the dozens ofOver the past year, election lawyers filed lawsuits. Trump and his associates had filed numerous lawsuits in an attempt to overturn it. all of which failed.
Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and other lawyers who worked on the case were sanctioned by a judge earlier this year. Trump-allied lawsuitsAnd ordered them to pay attorney’s fees in a Michigan case brought over false election fraud claims. Trump’s top lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was disbarred in June by a New York court for his role in perpetuating the former president’s election lies.
Though the strategy to file lawsuits over the election didn’t work out for the Trump team, the overall strategy paid out in spades, opening avenues for Republicans to openly skew elections in their favor by rewriting local laws and engaging in more aggressive gerrymandering.
Republicans in key states like North Carolina and OhioAre Priority chargingWith racistDistrict maps that give GOP an edge in 2022 midterms.
GOP electeds filed and passed law after law in nearly every state to suppress voters as an extreme and alarming reaction to Trump’s loss in 2020.
