Sidney Powell should be sanctioned over Wisc. election claims, governor tells appeals court
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Monday asked a U.S. appeals court in Chicago to revive his bid to sanction conservative lawyer Sidney Powell over one of her lawsuits alleging fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Evers, in a 75-page brief to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, argued that a judge who declined to sanction Powell did not recognize the "heart" of his argument: that Powell and a team of other lawyers "advanced meritless claims in their last-ditch effort to overturn the will of the people and have Donald J. Trump judicially declared the winner of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election."
Powell was among the most prominent lawyers to bring lawsuits after the election, alleging massive election fraud in battleground states that Democrat Joe Biden won.
In Wisconsin, she sued state officials in December 2020 on behalf of two Republicans, alleging without providing direct evidence that Biden's election win over Trump in the state was tainted by fraud.
U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper denied Evers' motion for sanctions in August, ruling that she no longer had jurisdiction over the case. She also held that sanctions would not be appropriate because she had quickly dismissed Powell's lawsuit before delving into the merits of her claims.
Evers is seeking $106,000 in attorneys fees from Powell and the others as a sanction for bringing the case.
Powell and other attorneys representing plaintiff William Feehan did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did attorneys representing Evers. A spokesperson for Evers also did not respond to a request for comment.
Powell separately appeared before the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals earlier this month in a bid to overturn a $175,000 sanction imposed by U.S. District Judge Linda Parker in Michigan against Powell and others.
Powell's lawsuits in both Michigan and Wisconsin alleged a vast, tangled fraud linking voting machines to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and hackers from China and Iran.
Parker ruled that the Michigan lawsuit was filled with "speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched," and later called it "a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process."
Read more:
Trump ally Sidney Powell asks court to overturn sanctions over election lawsuit
Judge declines to sanction lawyer Sidney Powell in Wisconsin 2020 election case
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
