Two lawyers who filed suit challenging election results ordered to pay nearly $187K
Two Colorado lawyers were ordered by a federal judge to pay nearly $187,000 after filing lawsuits last year challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter said that the amount would cover the legal fees of the organizations that were sued and argued that it would deter anyone else from going through with lawsuits that could undermine the democratic system, according to The Washington Post.
“As officers of the Court, these attorneys have a higher duty and calling that requires meaningful investigation before prematurely repeating in court pleadings unverified and uninvestigated defamatory rumors that strike at the heart of our democratic system and were used by others to foment a violent insurrection that threatened our system of government,” Neureiter reportedly wrote in a Monday order.
Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker filed a class-action suit in December of 2020 on behalf of American voters alleging that there was a plan organized by voting machine vendor Dominion Voting Systems, government officials in four states and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to steal the election from former President Trump, the Post noted.
Neureiter dismissed the case in August and ruled that both attorneys had violated their ethical obligations, the newspaper added. He also reportedly referenced the suit at the time as “the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”
In his Monday order, both lawyers were required to pay over $11,000 to cover the legal fees of the states of Michigan and Pennsylvania as well as $50,000 to Facebook and $62,930 each to Dominion and the Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to the Post.
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Both lawyers were required to pay over $11,000 to cover the legal fees of the states of Michigan and Pennsylvania as well as $50,000 to Facebook and $62,930 each to Dominion and the Center for Tech and Civic Life.https://t.co/meBYDRpgRe
— The Hill (@thehill) November 23, 2021
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