The lawyers behind President Trump
Donald Trump McCarthy will offer UC’s request to review foreign spending on GOP bus senator on Trump pardons: “This is rotten to the bottom” Trump pardons Manafort, Stone and Charles Kushner in the last round MOREFailed efforts to annul the election face growing ethical grievances to advance what critics say is a frivolous legal campaign designed to delegitimize the president-elect. Joe Biden
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Lawyer Trump Rudy Giuliani
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As a result, judges and bar associations could soon face the task of finding out whether these legal efforts amount to an intensive defense or whether they have crossed the line.
According to legal ethics experts, disciplinary sanctions could include fines, private or public censorship, suspension of legal licenses, or even disenfranchisement.
The possibility of Trump’s allied attorneys facing disciplinary action was triggered in many ways by his unfortunate track record of losing profits in court. According to some estimates, the campaign and its allies have only prevailed in a minor case affecting a few Pennsylvania ballots, while losing or withdrawing in more than 50 rounds to state and federal court.
“Basically, the rules require lawyers to remove junk from the court to protect judicial appeals, which are limited. Lawyers have a guardian role, ”said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University. “The abysmal rate of failure of campaign claims and the fact that claims were filed even after many losses, reveal almost certain violations of these rules.”
On Tuesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) became the last public official to press for the punishment of pro-Trump lawyers. In a lawsuit, Nessel asked U.S. District Judge Linda Parker, based in Michigan, to consider sanctions against Powell, Wood and their co-directors for what Nessel called a “baseless lawsuit.”
The district judge, appointed by Obama, rejected earlier this month the huge candidacy, which sought to grant Michigan’s electoral votes to Trump despite his loss to Biden by 154,000 votes. Since then, however, Trump’s allied legal team has only doubled, asking the Supreme Court last week for an appeal and asking judges to expedite the examination of the case.
“These are blatant lies that Ms. Powell is subjecting, from all sides, to the United States Supreme Court,” Nessel told CNN on Tuesday. “It’s disturbing and I think it’s undermining our whole profession and we need to be held accountable.”
Aside from that, a Delaware judge presiding over an unrelated election case warned Wood that the behavior he displayed while conducting a Trump-friendly litigation could cause him to fall into hot water. Wood represents Carter Page, a former adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign, who is suing a Delaware state court media company for defamation.
Delaware High Court Judge Craig Karsnitz brought Wood to work Tuesday for alleged unprofessional behavior in lawsuits aimed at overturning election results in Wisconsin and Georgia. The judge identified several alleged ethical breaches, including Wood filing a lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiff without permission and filing a false affidavit.
“It appears in Court that, since Mr. Wood’s motion was granted, he has been involved in conduct in other jurisdictions, which, if it occurred in Delaware, would violate the rules of professional conduct of Delaware attorneys,” Karsnitz wrote in show the cause, which was first reported by law and the crime of departure.
When asked to comment by The Hill, Wood said he “has not seen any request for sanctions, so I cannot comment.”
Powell did not respond to any requests for comment; neither Powell nor Wood are officially part of Trump’s legal team, according to campaign officials.
Trump’s top lawyer Giuliani has also been the subject of ethical complaints about his role in trying to nullify Biden’s victory.
In November, he receives it. Bill Pascrell
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“I have just filed legal complaints with the AZ, MI, NV, NY and PA neighborhoods against Rudy Giuliani and 22 other lawyers seeking his landings to file frivolous lawsuits and try to help Trump steal the election and dismantle democracy,” he said Pascrell wrote in a Nov. 20 tweet.
When asked for a comment, Giuliani said he was unaware of the complaint filed against him by Pascrell.
“I haven’t heard anything like that ???” Giuliani said in an email response to The Hill. “Who is he?”
Earlier this month, more than 1,500 attorneys signed an open letter condemning the efforts of Trump’s legal team, identifying by name Giuliani, Powell and several other Trump allies.
“President Trump’s rain of litigation is a pretext for a campaign to undermine public confidence in the outcome of the 2020 election, which will inevitably subvert constitutional democracy,” said the open letter compiled by the Democracy Advocates group. American. “Unfortunately, the president’s chief agents and facilitators of this effort are lawyers, bound by their oath and ethical standards to maintain the rule of law.”
Steven Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University, said he generally opposes what he called the “armamentization” of legal ethics. In 2017 he wrote an essay on Slate that went back against the disciplinary charges filed by law professors against former Trump adviser and White House adviser Kellyanne Conway
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But Lubet said he sees election-related lawsuits differently insofar as it can be shown that lawyers filed false claims in court records.
“I wouldn’t make a similar argument to defend a lawyer’s false claims in federal court litigation,” he said.
Legal ethics rules generally prohibit lawyers from filing frivolous claims, which are those that have no legal or factual support. Although, even if a legal argument is not considered frivolous, experts said, they can still violate ethical standards if they are made for an invalid reason.
“The federal rule prohibits attorneys from invoking the judiciary for an“ improper purpose, ”Gillers of New York University Law School said, citing fundraising efforts or questioning elections as examples of unethical purposes.
As Trump’s languid legal campaign dragged on, election law experts for weeks said the litigation turned into an attempt to pass the election to a campaign to fuel Trump’s fundraising effort, which has amassed more than $ 200 million since Nov. 3. some scholars, it became clear shortly after election day that the kind of claims and evidence needed to persuade the courts was clearly absent.
However, it is relatively rare for public sanctions to be applied. According to Deborah Rhode, a law professor at Stanford Law School, less than 10 percent of all disciplinary complaints end in public sanctions.
But Rhode said courts or disciplinary bodies may be able to see Trump’s post-election litigation in a particularly harsh light, given the heavy concerns they have at their disposal.
“The conduct of these lawyers was so enormous and the stakes were so high, given the way it fits to fuel doubts about the legitimacy of the election and the reputation of the lawyers, that perhaps some disciplinary authorities will move to act “, he said.