Right-wing attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood at the so-called Stop the Steal rally.
The City of Detroit held nothing back in a legal brief asking a federal judge to refer every member of the so-called “Kraken” legal team to disbarment proceedings, blaming them for body count left on the day of the U.S. Capitol insurrection.
“Let there be no mistake, there is blood on Lin Wood and Sidney Powell’s hands and on the hands of all those who pushed this lawsuit,” Detroit’s attorney David Fink wrote in the opening lines of his blistering 22-page legal brief on Tuesday evening. “Brian Sicknick, a Trump supporting Capitol Police Officer, died defending the Capitol against those who were deranged by plaintiffs’ counsel and their ilk.”
“Rosanne Boyland, of Kennesaw, Georgia, who fell prey to the election lies, was crushed to death by fellow rioters,” the brief continues. “The life of Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from California, was cut short because she tragically believed the lies spread in this lawsuit. Ms. Babbitt’s final tweet was a retweet of L. Lin Wood stating, ‘Mike Pence @vp @Mike_Pence must resign & thereafter be charged with TREASON,’ and ‘Chief Justice John Roberts must RESIGN.'”
On top of apparently calling for Pence’s court-martial and execution by firing squad, Wood accused Chief Justice Roberts of being involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile ring, a conspiracy theory that the pro-Trump lawyer apparently held for more than a year. Wood allegedly regaled his former law partners with the bizarre allegations, in writing or recorded conversations. The statement smacked of Wood’s longtime association with the QAnon conspiracy theory shared by droves of U.S. Capitol insurrectionists, but Detroit noted that the pro-Trump lawyer deflected blame elsewhere.
“Instead of accepting responsibility for their part inciting the mob, both Powell and Wood quickly pivoted to assigning blame to others: Powell tweets ‘It’s #Antifa.’ “Wood started the rumor that Antifa activists were behind the violence by posting photos of two of the rioters which were on the website of a local Antifa group. Wood, of course, did not advise his 800,000 followers that the photos were from pages on the website which identified known white supremacists. Wood then tried to claim that Ms. Babbitt’s death was a ‘false flag’ operation to ‘frame’ him. He also continued unabated, posting to ‘free speech’ website Parler that ‘Mike Pence is a dark soul … [h]e uses 13, 14, & 15 year old boys for his own self-serving purposes ….” [Citations omitted]
Before Twitter permanently suspended his account, Wood had the QAnon hashtag #WWG1WGA—”Where we go one, we go all”—on his bio, a slogan affiliated with the conspiracy theory that there is a sinister cabal of child-eating Satanists and pedophiles opposed by former President Donald Trump.
The Department of Justice has charged several QAnon adherents among the insurrectionists, noting that the “discredited” theory has the violent aim of arresting and executing the imagined malefactors in a “storm.” Babbitt was one of those inspired by these tales, leading her to try to break through the door of the Speaker’s Lobby, when she was shot by law enforcement protecting Congress members behind the door.
Wood also represented Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon adherent who once advocated executing Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for treason and liked a comment on Facebook calling for a bullet to her head, according to an explosive CNN report.
When the city first filed its sanctions motion, Detroit rattled off the parade of “lies,” “unhinged conspiracy theories,” and “fraud on the court” by Wood, Powell, and the rest of the so-called Kraken team—so-named after the mythical octopus-like monster dramatized and quickly defeated in the Hollywood blockbuster “Clash of the Titans.” The lawyers pined for martial law, fundraised through shadowy dark-money entities, and marshaled a secret witness code-named “Spyder,” who later told a reporter that the legal team made him submit a false declaration.
Despite the rejection of their lawsuits from every court that heard them, neither Wood nor Powell backed down from any of the allegations. Their co-counsel Stefanie Lambert Junttila continued to cling to them in a legal brief offering a procedural defense that Powell could not be held liable because she did not sign the document. (Powell did, electronically.)
Detroit pushed back at the attorneys’ attempts to distance themselves from the “Kraken” monster of their creation.
“In the present case, each attorney either signed frivolous documents or advocated for frivolous positions,” their legal brief states. “Indeed, this case was not local counsel’s case; it was Sidney Powell’s case. She announced she was filing it. She promoted the claims and the ‘experts.’ It was also Lin Wood’s case. He announced he was filing it. He promoted the claims, even adopting the Parler username @krakenwood.”
The sanctions motion remains pending before U.S. District Judge Linda Parker, who rejected their attempt to flout the will of millions of Michigan voters: “The People have spoken,” the judge ruled on Dec. 7.
Read Detroit’s reply motion below:
(Image via YouTube screengrab)
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