The city of Detroit asked a federal judge to impose sanctions against attorney Sidney Powell over her lawsuit alleging widespread vote fraud in key battleground states, including Michigan.
In her lawsuit, Powell alleged that Detroit election officials intimidated Republican poll watchers — confirmed by several witnesses’ affidavits — and removed votes for President Trump.
The city responded with a filing calling on the court to punish her for spreading “falsehoods.”
“Few lawsuits breathe more lies than this one. The allegations are little more than fevered rantings of conspiracy theorists built on the work of other conspiracy theorists,” the filing reads. “Plaintiffs rely on affidavits of so-called ‘experts’ — really confidence men who spread lie after lie under cover of academic credential — which misstate obviously false statistics. These ‘experts’ use academic jargon as if that could transmute their claims from conspiracy theory to legal theory.”
David Fink, an attorney for Detroit, then petitioned U.S. District Judge Linda Parker to impose sanctions on Powell based on federal Rule 11, which forbids lawsuits to be filed “for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation.”
If Parker approves the sanctions, Powell could face hefty fines and will be banned from practicing law in the Eastern District of Michigan.
“Plaintiffs and their counsel understood that the mere filing of a suit (no matter how frivolous) could, without any evidence, raise doubts in the minds of millions of Americans about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election,” Fink wrote.
Powell now has a three-week window in which she can rescind her lawsuit and avoid sanctions, but Powell said she would not withdraw her claims, according to Forbes.
It’s not clear whether Parker will enforce the sanctions, but she was critical of Powell’s “Kraken” lawsuit when it was dismissed.
“Plaintiffs ask this court to ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and to ignore the will of millions of voters. This, the Court cannot, and will not, do,” Parker wrote in her ruling.
