Michigan ‘Kraken’ Case: Lin Wood Claims Court Doesn’t Have ‘Authority’ To Punish Him For Sharing Court Hearing Video - Forbes

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Topline

Far-right attorney Lin Wood argued late Thursday he should not be sanctioned after sharing a video of a court hearing in Sidney Powell’s Michigan post-election case alleging voter fraud, claiming the court cannot legally discipline him in the case after a judge said she was considering doing so.

Key Facts

U.S. District Judge Linda Parker said last week she is considering disciplinary action against Wood after the attorney shared a clip on Telegram of a July 12 court hearing in the case to determine whether Powell, Wood and the other attorneys in the case should be sanctioned for bringing it.

Wood responded to the request for him to be punished in a court filing late Thursday, which argues the South Carolina-based attorney was not formally admitted as an attorney in the case and thus cannot be punished in it.

Wood’s attorney Paul Stablein said Wood did not give Powell explicit permission to list him as an attorney in the Michigan case to begin with and he did not sign the pleadings, and thus the court “does not have the authority to impose discipline on an attorney who is not before the court in any capacity.”

While court rules prohibit people from “broadcasting” videos of the court hearing—which streamed live on YouTube—Stablein argued Wood did not because he only shared a video on Telegram that a separate third party had recorded and made public.

Wood “did not make [the video], he did not authorize its making and he did not acquire himself a copy of it,” Stablein wrote, saying Wood “merely provided an address” for where people could view a clip from the hearing for themselves.

Drew Paterson, the attorney for defendant Robert Davis, who requested the court sanction Wood, told Forbes in an email Wood’s response “is just as frivolous as the lawsuit” itself.

Chief Critic

“Mr. Wood's actions clearly violated the local court rules of the Eastern District of Michigan and I trust the Court will discipline him accordingly,” Paterson told Forbes in a statement.

What To Watch For

Wood has asked the court for an evidentiary hearing in the case if it doesn’t immediately dismiss the request for sanctions against him. Parker has already rejected Davis’ request to hold Wood in criminal contempt of court for sharing the video, but under the court rules she cited, Wood could face other potential punishments like the court placing him on probation, reprimanding him for misconduct, requiring him to pay restitution or transferring him to “inactive status” as an attorney.

Tangent

Parker has already shut down a request from the pro-Trump attorneys to make video of the court hearing completely public in light of the sanctions motion against Wood. While counsel for Powell, Wood and the other attorneys argued the hearing should be made available because they believed media reports about the hearing were “incorrect,” Parker said that was unnecessary, and the court already “threw the virtual doors to the July 12 proceeding wide open—far wider than could have been accommodated had the hearing been conducted in person.”

Key Background

Powell brought the Michigan lawsuit in federal court in the aftermath of the election, one of four such battleground state lawsuits that sought to overturn the election based on purported evidence of voter fraud. Powell—whose voter fraud theories led even the Trump administration and campaign to distance themselves from her—dubbed the legal strategy “releas[ing] the Kraken,” after the 1981 film The Clash of the Titans. All of those lawsuits failed, however, with Parker ruling in Michigan the right-wing lawsuit was based on “nothing but speculation and conjecture.” Michigan officials then asked the court to sanction the attorneys behind the case over their “frivolous” and error-ridden lawsuit, which they argued was brought in bad faith. While Powell claimed during the sanctions hearing she and her co-counsel had “practiced law with the highest standards,” Parker signaled she could impose sanctions, criticizing affidavits alleging election fraud as “fantastical” and based on “levels of hearsay” and suggesting the attorneys did not do their due diligence in making sure the evidence they were putting forth was factual.