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The highest court in the United States has denied a request from attorneys with ties to Donald Trump who were facing consequences for promoting false lawsuits related to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
The country’s top court rejected the appeal on Tuesday, allowing the 2023 decision of a Michigan federal appeals court to stand, which upheld the penalties against them.
In 2021, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, part of a group of lawyers known as the “Kraken,” were met with legal repercussions in federal court for their baseless attempts to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. They had filed a frivolous lawsuit in an attempt to reject Michigan’s election results.
In the year of the ruling, US District Judge Linda Parker declared that the lawyers’ lawsuit was founded on mere assumptions and unsupported suspicions. As a result, they were instructed to pay over $175,000 in penalties to the state.
The previous year, the decision by the appeals court remained unchanged but the owed sum was reduced.
The ruling from the top court in the country on Tuesday did not provide an explanation, as is common for orders that do not have any recorded disagreements.
“In her 2021 ruling, Judge Parker stated that there is a difference between defending rights that may have been infringed upon in a suspicious election and deceiving a federal court and the public into believing that rights were violated, regardless of whether any laws or rights were actually violated. This is the case in this situation.”
In 2020, Ms. Powell and two other attorneys who were previously allied with Trump pleaded guilty to charges related to a large-scale investigation in Georgia. The investigation targeted Trump and 18 others who were accused of participating in an illegal scheme to reject his defeat in the state during the 2020 election.
The consequences of spreading falsehoods and unfounded beliefs about the 2020 election have resulted in a total cost of nearly $1 billion over the past few months. This includes a $148 million judgement against Rudy Giuliani for defamation and a settlement between Fox News and a voting equipment company in another defamation lawsuit.
The mentioned amount does not factor in the increasing expenses for legal matters related to the numerous incidents linked to the January 6 event and the assault on the US Capitol. It also does not account for the ongoing federal and state criminal cases against Mr. Trump and his supporters for their purported efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcome, as well as other lawsuits from voting technology firms, law enforcement officials, and members of Congress.
This is an ongoing situation.
The source is from the Independent, a news publication.
