30 August 2021

INCOMPETENT, IRRESPONSBILE, DANGEROUS & RECKLESS: 2 of Trump's Politically-Motivated Lawyers Get Sanctioned

Intro > Tim Cushing publishing in Techdirt today
"It's not just headliners like L. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell getting sanctioned for pursuing bullshit election fraud lawsuits. Other grifting asshats with Esq. on their letterhead are getting benchslapped for abusing the court system to pursue political goals, utilizing nothing more than speculation and wild conspiracy theories as "evidence."

More Pro-Trump Lawyers Sanctioned For BS Election Fraud Lawsuits

from the keep-it-coming,-judges dept

The lawyers - Gary D. Felder and Ernest John Walker - are  behind a ridiculous lawsuit filed in Colorado that has just been sanctioned by a federal judge. The opening of the sanction order [PDF] makes a valiant effort to succinctly sum up the litigation that has resulted in punishment, but there's just so much going on. Enjoy (?) the following craziness:

This lawsuit arises out of the 2020 election for President of the United States. The original Complaint (Dkt. #1) purported to be a class action lawsuit on behalf of all American registered voters, alleging a vast conspiracy between four governors, secretaries of state, and various election officials of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia; along with Dominion, a private supplier of election and voting technology; the social media company Facebook; CTCL, a non-profit organization dedicated to making elections more secure and inclusive; as well as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

Three private companies and four different states were named as defendants. Colorado, however, was not one of those states, which does nothing to explain why the plaintiffs pursued this case in a Colorado federal court.

The court doesn't know why this was pursued in Colorado either. Or why it was pursued at all. The lawsuit clearly had no merit from the moment it was filed. . .

The plaintiffs were far from credible, and claimed to speak for 160 million "similarly situated" voters. Except that most voters, given the choice, would have nothing to do with these self-appointed representatives. . .

Trying to duck sanctions, the lawyers tried to argue this lawsuit was different than similar, already dismissed "election fraud" lawsuits filed elsewhere in the nation. Wrong, says the court, using their own words against them. . .

Sloppy due diligence is one thing. Constructing a complaint from debunked arguments, speculative hearsay, dismissed lawsuits, and the rantings of Donald J. Trump is quite another.

Irresponsible, reckless, and dangerous.

Both lawyers -- Gary D. Felder and Ernest John Walker -- will now be paying the legal fees of every defendant, including those voluntarily dismissed (the Pennsylvania parties). Hopefully this -- along with sanctions being handed down elsewhere -- will deter politically motivated lawyers from sucking up to lame duck presidents and attempting to undermine the democratic process the next time an election doesn't go their way."

Filed Under: conspiracy theories, donald trump, elections, ernest john walker, frivolous lawsuits, gary felder, grifting, sanctions

 
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Intro: Charles P. Pierce writing in Esquire 05 August 2021

Two of Trump's Former Lawyers Got Laughed Out of Court

Colorado Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter just hit Ernest Walker and Gary D. Fielder with the entire train.

 
Insert
"At least one day in the future, when Tucker Carlson is explaining to us how good we have it under whatever strongman is paying his fee in those days, we can look back on this perilous period of ours and take some warmth out of the fact that there were judges on the federal bench who could see plainly what so many politicians were doing their damndest to avoid. For example, out in Colorado, there is Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter, who hit a couple of the former president*’s former lawyers with the entire train. From the Washington Post:
In a scathing 68-page opinion, Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter found that the lawyers made little effort to corroborate information they had included in the suit, which argued there had been a vast national conspiracy to steal the election from President Donald Trump. He particularly called out the duo, Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker, for quoting Trump in their legal filing, which cited a presidential tweet that claimed without evidence that voting machines manufactured by the company Dominion Voting Systems had “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.” Neureiter called that allegation “highly disputed and inflammatory” and said the lawyers made no efforts to verify it.

Not only did Neureiter make these fakers regret their choice of post-graduate study, he got into their pockets, too, which is fairly standard practice in federal court, but which is delicious nonetheless. The two of them now have to pay the court costs of all the entities they sued. Which means they have to cut checks to, among other concerns, Dominion Voting Systems, as well as to Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. And the judge also made it clear that he’s not done with these people yet.

“In short, this was no slip-and-fall at the local grocery store,” wrote Neureiter, who was appointed as a magistrate judge by other judges. “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.” While the lawyers attached affidavits from various people who alleged the election had been rigged — a common tactic of Trump supporters in the dozens of challenges filed in the months after the election — Neureiter said a close examination of the testimony showed it was “notable only in demonstrating no firsthand knowledge by any Plaintiff of any election fraud, misconduct, or malfeasance.”

Perhaps Neureiter was shocked into action by the raw chutzpah that the two mouthpieces demonstrated in bringing the suit in the first place.

During a hearing last month, they argued that they had a good-faith belief that the election was stolen and that they did not trust government officials and others who had affirmed there was no widespread fraud. Fielder told the judge that when they filed their case in December, they saw the potential for violence stemming from discontent over possible fraud and thought their suit offered an alternative path for resolving concerns. “We’re peaceful people. We wanted to come to court and resolve it in a peaceful way,” he said. “What happened on January 6 was exactly what we predicted in the complaint.”

“We brought our utterly meritless and delusional legal action so crazy people would bust into the Capitol and wreck the joint, so it’s pretty much your fault that the place got trashed,” is derived from a logic with which I am unfamiliar, and which obviously ran counter to the judge’s sense of reality. The lawsuit, and the insanity behind it, was, he said, “The stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”

Hard to argue that point in retrospect now."

 RELATED CONTENT: YouTube

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RP0iKTLyL_o 

Why attorneys Gary Fielder and Ernie Walker are right for the job - YouTube

 

 

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