Trump Lawyers Who Spread False Election Claims Face Their Day in Court
While judges and discipline panels probe lawyers who may have shirked their duties while working in the Donald Trump administration, other members of the legal field say that the entire profession is in need of greater scrutiny and standards.
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Six months after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, attorneys who promoted former President Donald Trump’s false claims about election fraud are being forced to defend their actions in court, reports the Washington Post. And while Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, has called for an independent commission to produce a full accounting of how lawyers have lost sight of their duties as officers of the court, judges and attorney discipline panels are instead performing their own investigations, case by case, in a methodical fashion.
In Michigan, U.S. District Judge Linda Parker grilled lawyers close to Trump about the actions they took before filing a lawsuit that claimed irregularities in the 2020 election and the city of Detroit wants those attorneys to face sanctions. Those attorneys who are under scrutiny have either insisted that they practiced law with the highest standards or denied reading briefs before they were filed. Meanwhile, George Conway, a lawyer who regularly criticizes Trump and the attorneys who worked for him, and famously turned down a top job in the Trump Justice Department, said many of those lawyers who did serve in the Trump years deserve thanks for refusing to advance phony theories about election fraud this year. In addition, there are lawyers who think the legal profession needs to do a lot more to counter widespread violations of norms and rules, such as misleading courts, lawmakers and the public, in general.
