With the promise of incoming election litigation, the Supreme Court has been clearing the decks. This has culminated in the dismissal of cert petitions from Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and the collective of lawyers otherwise known as the Kraken, who were angling to eliminate sanctions laid on them due to their frivolous election litigation in Michigan.
The sanctions hearing in question was aired live during July 2021, thanks to pandemic alterations. The hearing itself was an unforgettable affair, involving bar members screaming, weeping and showing open disrespect to the court. Wood then claimed he bore no responsibility for the hundreds of pages of unvetted, facially nonsensical affidavits filed in the Michigan election challenge. As he only signed as “litigation counsel” and the case was dismissed prior to seeing the inside of a courtroom, he believed he held no responsibility for its filings. This was his position, both below and with the Sixth Circuit, and in front of SCOTUS. He continued to argue this before SCOTUS.
In response, Judge Parker disagreed, penning a 110-page ruling in which she condemned the lawyers for “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” and instructed them to cover the defendants’ legal costs and undergo twelve hours of CLE “in the subjects of pleading standards (at least six hours total) and election law (at least six hours total).”
Despite the failure of this case, this collective of lawyers were successful in holding off a challenge to the Seventh Circuit’s ruling that the state of Wisconsin had waited too long to file its own sanctions petition.
For in-depth information regarding this case read the Wood v. Whitmer docket or the Powell v. Whitmer docket, both available on the SCOTUS site.