Government

RIP To The Kraken. Here's Hoping Whatever Replaces It Is Equally Ridiculous.

Calamari, anyone?

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Rudy Giuliani And Trump Legal Advisor Hold Press Conference At RNC HQ

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In preparation for the coming avalanche of election litigation, the Supreme Court is clearing the decks. This morning it tossed cert petitions from Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and the merry band of Kraken lawyers who hoped to knock out sanctions imposed for their frivolous election litigation in Michigan.

Thanks to COVID, the sanctions hearing before Judge Linda Parker was livestreamed in July of 2021. It was a memorable shitshow, in which the participants — all of them members of the bar — cried, screamed, and openly disrespected the court.

Lin Wood, who AHEM retired last year after suggestions that he was ever so slightly out of his freakin’ gourd, repeatedly wandered off and turned his back on the judge during the Zoom hearing. Wood’s theory was that he bore no responsibility for the hundreds of pages of unvetted, facially nonsensical affidavits filed in the Michigan election challenge. Yes, okay, he did sign the thing. But only as “litigation counsel,” and since the case was dismissed before seeing the inside of a courtroom, he had no responsibility for the filings, right?

That was his position below, and with the Sixth Circuit. And he continued to argue it before SCOTUS.

Mama Kraken, AKA Sidney Powell, claimed that the hundreds of pages of gobbledygook she docketed in the case were evidence of her zealous advocacy, and the only way to determine the validity of an affidavit of some rando walking his dog who says he saw a person with multiple ballots in a plastic bag was via “the crucible of an evidentiary hearing.”

Judge Parker disagreed, penning a 110-page ruling in which she excoriated the lawyers for “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” and ordered 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).”

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The Sixth Circuit had no time for this nonsense either, affirming the majority of Judge Parker’s ruling, and so Team Krak pinned its hopes on SCOTUS.

In her petition alleging various procedural defects in the trial judge’s ruling, Powell was represented by attorney Lawrence Joseph. Joseph, who represented the state of Texas in its own LOLsuit seeking to overturn the election, is currently the subject of disciplinary proceedings in DC, along with Julia Haller and Brandon Johnson, two of Powell’s fellow sanctionee/petitioners. The tentacles are all intertwined!

But sadly this effort was just as successful as Joseph’s previous outings.

From SOTUS Orders List, denying cert: 23-486 ) POWELL, SIDNEY, ET AL. V. WHITMER, GOV. OF MI, ET AL. ) 23-497 ) WOOD, L. LIN V. WHITMER, GOV. OF MI, ET AL.

Even an assist from Judicial Watch, which filed an amicus brief describing itself both as a “non-partisan, public interest organization” and as a “conservative advocacy group that often brings election and voting lawsuits,” didn’t help.

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But it wasn’t a total loss for Joseph and the rest of the squidlets. They did manage to hold off a challenge to the Seventh Circuit’s ruling that the state of Wisconsin waited too long to file for its own sanctions petition.

So, big mazal to Team Krak. After all this time, you finally won one.

And now … let the 2024 election litigation begin.

Wood v. Whitmer [SCOTUS docket]
Powell v. Whitmer [SCOTUS docket]
Evers v. Dean [SCOTUS docket]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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