Here’s the NY Times article about that (probably paywalled. Some excerpts:
A federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday night ordered sanctions to be levied against nine pro-Trump lawyers, including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood, ruling that a lawsuit laden with conspiracy theories that they filed last year challenging the validity of the presidential election was “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”
In her decision, Judge Linda V. Parker of the Federal District Court in Detroit ordered the lawyers to be referred to the local legal authorities in their home states for possible suspension or disbarment.
Declaring that the lawsuit should never have been filed, Judge Parker wrote in her 110-page order that it was “one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election,” but another to deceive “a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed.”
“This case was never about fraud,” Judge Parker wrote. “It was about undermining the people’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so.”
This seems to be the equivalent of taking a kid’s allowance for the week and making them sit on a stool in the corner wearing a dunce cap for a few days. That’s humiliating enough for a 10-year-old; how must it feel to a professional old enough to have grandchildren?
But adding to Sidney’s insanity is that she just did an interview and is now claiming the FBI set up the entire insurrection thing (and of course hasn’t backed down from her other claims either). I just don’t understand the “sprinting into the abyss of ridiculousness” game plan she has. Giuliani went the same route a few years prior to her joining in… so she has Rudy’s track record to go by as a guide to how well that plan ends up.
It reminds me of the Simpsons scene where Homer ends up jumping to gorge on a skate board. At first his jump looks promising like he might land on the other side… until reality sets in and he sees his actual trajectory is to fall way short of a safe landing and instead slams into the side of the hill and brutally bounces off rocks over and over on his way down.
Rudy has already hit the bottom of the canyon and is just waiting for the skateboard to fall on his head. Sidney has just started bouncing off rocks on her way down. It’s going to be fun watching them both get air lifted up and fall back down the second time once the defamation lawsuit and final disciplinary actions get going.
I listened as Mike Dunford livestreamed his reading of the decision. It was both enlightening and very, very amusing.
Basically, the judge told them they were stupid, ignorant thieves and liars, and while she can do something to make them less ignorant (the CLE order) and take away some of their ill-gotten gains, it’s up to the state legal disciplinary bodies to suspend or disbar them and she really, really wants them to. The fact she’s a federal judge making a referral is going to make those disciplinary bodies pay very, very close attention to that referral.
Mike also said that this opinion is going to wind up in a lot of legal textbooks as an explanation of how not to file pleadings and the like and what the duty of an officer of a court is. (And I hope I got the terminology right.)
I dunno, did you see the show Community? Joel McHale’s character Jeff Winger was disbarred when it was revealed that he’d forged his academic credentials, and he had to go to community college in an attempt to get his law career back.
I could see them doing something like that as a reality TV show following these doofuses as they try to go back to school.
I’m visualizing them in a Back to School scenario, where they “correct” the professor’s description of legal proceedings by pointing out that he left out a bunch of steps like spreading conspiracy theories, attacking the other side’s evidence as fraudulent, etc.
