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In the continuing fallout from the “Kraken” election suits, Wisconsin is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees from Donald Trump and Sidney Powell for their attempts to overturn the state’s election results via lawsuits that were “frivolous, dilatory, and without merit.”
That’s one expensive plate of calamari.
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The state asks U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig to hold the former president and his attorneys jointly and severally liable for $145,000 to reimburse the state for the costs of defending against a suit that was barred by laches, incompetently pleaded, and all but identical to one the campaign had already lost in state court.
“From this case’s inception through the staggeringly expedited subsequent proceedings, there is no doubt that Trump and his attorneys brought and litigated this lawsuit in bad faith,” the state argues. “Unconscionably, they did so for the purpose of sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, with a goal of disenfranchising nearly 3.3 million Wisconsin voters in order to secure the presidency contrary to majority will.”
And noting that the plaintiff continued to prosecute his claim after it was clearly moot, while using the specter of litigation to raise $250 million from his rube supporters, the state demands sanctions because “Trump did not pursue this case, or any other post-election litigation, in good faith; instead he used the courts—as well as the defendants, all of whom were government actors—as tools to assist him in raising funds to aid future political endeavors.”
Graded on the 2020 Batshit Litigation curve, it sounds pretty tame, really. But the motion for sanctions against Sidney Powell and her hapless client William Feehan is a hilarious catalog of self owns and stepped on rakes.
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How do you file in the name of a plaintiff who never consented to be part of the case; demand injunctive relief without asking for a TRO or expedited briefing; screw up the entry of appearance; copypasta a demand for evidence from the Michigan Kraken tentacle into the Wisconsin filing; fabricate a quote from a case in the very circuit where you’re arguing; cite a case which has been overturned; misrepresent the qualifications of your expert witnesses; appeal before a final judgment is entered; race off to the Supreme Court before the Seventh Circuit has un-f*cked the procedural mess caused by your first untimely appeal; then botch that filing as well, and write a snotty letter blaming the SCOTUS clerk for it — ALL IN THE SAME CASE?
Dunno. But Sidney Powell does.
“Plaintiff’s complaint did not outline coherent legal claims so much as it flitted among a variety of fringe conspiracy theories, sourced to anonymous declarations submitted by ostensible experts who were later identified and revealed to be extreme partisans with neither experience nor qualifications to provide any type of opinion on the subject matter,” the state argues.
But wait, there’s more!
Even more egregious than the slapdash way Plaintiff’s attorneys handled the proceedings, was their request that this Court overturn Wisconsin’s certified election results, disenfranchising nearly 3.3 million voters, and counterfactually declare by fiat that Donald Trump had won the state’s electoral votes. This would be completely unprecedented, but for the fact that Plaintiff’s counsel had filed similar cases seeking similar relief—all ending with similar failure—in several other states before filing in Wisconsin. Instead of evidence and legal argument, Plaintiff offered a tangled web of irrelevant (and inaccurate) conspiracy theories, ultimately suggesting that Dominion voting machines had altered individual votes to favor Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
And so Wisconsin is demanding $106,000 in fees, since it had to waste time defending against this rancid cowpie of a lawsuit. Good thing the plaintiff and his attorney didn’t already piss off U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper with their antics this winter.
Trump v. Wisconsin Elections Commission [Docket via Court Listener]
Feehan v. Wisconsin Elections Commission [Docket via Court Listener]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.