Federal judge sanctions lawyers who challenged 2020 election results, calls claims ‘fantastical’

A federal judge in Colorado sanctioned lawyers who challenged the 2020 presidential election results, calling their election claims “fantastical.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter issued an opinion Wednesday sanctioning Ernest Walker and Gary Fielder over the lawsuit, which the judge said is “the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”

“In short, this was no slip-and-fall at the local grocery store. Albeit disorganized and fantastical, the Complaint’s allegations are extraordinarily serious and, if accepted as true by large numbers of people, are the stuff of which violent insurrections are made,” Neureiter wrote.

The suit at issue was filed in December, and alleged that officials in four states conspired to steal the election from former President Trump.

The lawsuit targeted officials in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — all key states that President Biden won in 2020. The complaint also targeted Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and elections nonprofit CTCL.

The plaintiffs sought to win $160 billion for the allegations. Neureiter tossed the complaint in April.

Neureiter did not hold back in his 68-page ruling, writing that the suit had “no plausible good faith justification.”

Neurinter further slammed the plaintiffs for copying claims that had already been dismissed elsewhere, including a tweet from Trump baselessly claiming that Dominion deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.

“Under the circumstances of this case, with this election, with this insurrection, with the on-going threats to election officials and company employees, including in a federal filing as if it were true such an inflammatory and damaging allegation, without any attempt at verification, merely because the out-going President had said it, was reckless and did not represent a reasonable inquiry under the circumstances,” the judge wrote.

Other pro-Trump attorneys appear to be headed for a similar fate.

In Michigan, U.S. District Judge Linda Parker grilled Trump allies Sidney Powell and Lin Wood during a hearing late last month over a similar lawsuit filed in Michigan. The city of Detroit and Michigan’s secretary of state are asking the judge to sanction the attorneys.