SCOTUS Denies Trump Lawyers Appeal

Supreme Court denial sent message to Trump lawyers: No one is above the law | Opinion

It is a privilege to practice law in the United States. Lawyers take an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of the state in which they are admitted to practice. Disavowing election results based on unproven theories, and then filing a lawsuit against elected officials asserting frivolous legal claims violates these oaths, undercuts the credibility of the justice system and the electoral process, wastes taxpayer dollars required to defend these cases and burdens the time of the courts required to consider these unsupported claims.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rehear an appeal from Sidney Powell and several other attorneys of former President Donald Trump seeking to overturn monetary sanctions assessed by the U. S. District Court against them for filing a baseless lawsuit against the City of Detroit, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, alleging the November 2020 presidential election in Michigan was fraudulent.

After dismissing the suit, U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker in August 2021 imposed sanctions, including $175,000 to cover legal fees that the state and other defendants incurred in their defense.

In the 110-page opinion, Judge Parker stated: “This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process. It is one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election. It is another to take on the charge of deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated. This is what happened here.”

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the monetary and disciplinary sanctions imposed by Parker in June 2023 (reducing the financial amount to $150,000), finding, in part, the attorneys’ inquiry into allegations about the use of Dominion voting systems “patently inadequate.” The court also called their claims that Dominion granted foreign adversaries access to voting data “utterly baseless.”

The plaintiffs and their lawyers, however, unsuccessfully continued to assert their baseless claims by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court (the third one to consider the claims) refused to consider the Plaintiffs’ appeal.

The effect is that the nation’s highest court has made Parker’s opinion final: “This lawsuit should never have been filed.”

We couldn’t agree more.

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The litigation wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars and countless hours of public servants’ time expended to defend against meritless claims of election fraud. The integrity and security of our nation’s election process was wrongfully called into question and Michigan voters could have been deceived into thinking their rights were violated.