Government

Sixth Circuit Takes A Whack At The Kraken Lawyers

Your failure to plan is not the court's emergency, fellas.

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Team Kraken is back, baby, and their appetite for public humiliation remains undimmed. Yesterday they got pantsed at the Sixth Circuit for filing a motion so untimely as to be, in the words of the court, “inexplicable.”

It started last summer, when the City of Detroit and State of Michigan requested sanctions in the so called “Kraken” litigation led by attorney Sidney Powell in an effort to overturn the election. After a screaming shitshow hearing, US District Judge Linda V. Parker imposed monetary sanctions on August 25, 2020, as well as ordering Powell and several of her fellow travelers, including Howard Kleinhendler and Lin Wood, to attend non-partisan continuing legal education on the subjects of pleading standards and election law — appropriate since they got dinged for spamming the docket with facially nonsensical affidavits, as well as multiplying the proceedings.

The court immediately referred the lawyers to their state bars for possible discipline, stayed the monetary sanctions pending appeal, and gave Powell et al six months to finish the CLEs.

Did these lawyers file for a stay of the non-monetary sanctions in September or October? They did not. Nor did they request relief after December 2, when the judgment was finalized. In fact, they waited until February 14, a mere 11 days before those CLEs were due to be completed on February 25 — oh, hey, that’s today!

Apparently they were feeling frisky on Valentine’s Day, since they put some wild stuff in that “Emergency” motion, claiming “irreparable loss of a First Amendment right” from being forced to attend “non-partisan” CLEs.

And they were still feeling frisky a week later when they filed another motion explaining that they couldn’t possibly have asked the trial judge for a stay because “The District Court is clearly bent on vengeance, not justice.”

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Frankly, Appellants were afraid to go back to a district judge who had taken such a vengeful attitude towards them; who knows what other indignity the court would heap on them for deigning to ask for a stay? Having decided to stay the monetary sanctions but not the nonmonetary sanctions, the court might well take umbrage at any effort to reverse its decision and make things even worse for Appellants.

Well, it’s a choice.

But perhaps not a good one, since the appellate panel seemed not to appreciate the argument that the Krakheads had no better option than to wait five months and 19 days to request a stay because the trial judge was OMG so mean.

“The Attorneys’ unsupported speculation that the district court would not exercise its authority in good faith is unfounded, particularly considering the district court’s painstaking analysis in support of its sanctions order and its sua sponte recognition that a stay of the monetary portion of the judgment was appropriate,” they wrote acidly, adding that, “There was also ample time for this court to consider a motion to stay in the normal course.”

Which means that these brainiacs have until midnight tonight to finish those CLEs.

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But, as it turns out, that won’t be a problem for Howard Kleinhendler who actually finished his homework earlier this month, according to an affidavit he filed with Judge Parker yesterday. Meaning that his request for emergency relief was moot, at least on his own behalf, before it was ever filed. He even went so far as to submit 110 pages of CLE course materials to prove it, which is a good joke on everyone who paid to download it on PACER, although perhaps a suboptimal use of court resources.

So why did that weirdo go to the trouble of asking for an emergency stay when he’d already complied with the order?

Well, they don’t call these guys Krakheads for nothing.

King v. Whitmer [District Court Docket, via Court Listener]
King v. Whitmer [Sixth Circuit Docket, via Court Listener]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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