“Sidney Powell and other attorneys who defended former President Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election have been summoned for a sanctions hearing in a Michigan federal court,” The Hill reported on Friday, June 18, 2021.
“On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Linda Parker ordered the attorneys to appear at a hearing on July 6,” The Hill said. The sanctions were requested by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, in response to a lawsuit challenging Michigan’s 2020 presidential election results, which weren’t close. Biden won Michigan by more than 150,000 votes.
The Republican challenge of Michigan’s voting results was heavily tinged by racism. They focused their attack on Wayne County and Detroit, where the population is more than 40% African-American. As I previously posted here, when you examine GOP “voting fraud” claims, “a clear picture emerges: Black votes are ‘fraudulent,’ and letting black people vote is ‘fraud'” in their way of thinking. Generally speaking, they requested recounts and contested results in places where black voters are concentrated.
The sanctions Judge Parker can impose on attorneys Sidney Powell, Greg Rohl, Scott Hagerstrom, and Stefanie Junttila are limited. She can’t disbar them. Attorneys are licensed by their state bar associations. However, they have to be admitted to practice in federal courts, and she could bar them from practicing in her federal judicial district. If she finds the lawsuit was frivolous, she also could order them to reimburse the state for its costs of defending itself in the lawsuit.
(Powell also is allegedly in violation of Florida’s charitable solicitation laws; read that story here.)
First, she must make an impartial determination of whether the lawyers violated professional rules, or rules of the court. In this respect, Powell didn’t help herself by saying, in response to a defamation suit against her by a voting systems company, that “no reasonable person” would have believed her assertions. She can behave that way in the court of public opinion, but not in a court of law.
Attorneys can be sanctioned for that. A lawyer has a duty to investigate the facts before filing suit, and to file suit only if there’s a reasonable basis in fact and law for the claim being asserted. This keeps lawyers and their clients from wasting court resources on claims that have no chance to succeed, and protects people on the other side from having to defend against baseless claims.
If the judge concludes Powell et al. deserve to be sanctioned, the sanction should be proportionate. Attorney punishments aren’t either-or; they’re on a graduated scale: They can consist of admonishment (i.e., don’t do it again), reprimand (you were bad), censure (you were very bad), a period of suspension (temporary banishment), or disbarment (permanent banishment); and, separately under court rules, being required to pay the defense expenses (these so-called “Rule 11 sanctions” are not, strictly speaking, attorney discipline, but rather restitution).
What the sanction is doesn’t matter. The symbolism of punishing is far more important than the punishment itself, and surely the judge realizes this. That’s also true of the Capitol rioters; whether they get off relatively lightly matters far less than whether they get off. Holding them accountable is necessary to uphold the system of law and demonstrate that it’s still intact.
That’s what Oregon’s Republican state legislators did when they joined with Democrats in expelling one of their own members for colluding with state capitol invaders; and by doing that, they brought their party a step back from the abyss. There needs to be more of that in legislatures, in Congress, in courts, everywhere. The GOP’s office holders and party leaders need to put the Trump anarchy behind them, and take further steps toward bringing their party back into the system of rules that keeps our politics civilized instead of barbaric. If they choose to do that, we should welcome them back. Our political system needs healthy competition.