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Long before becoming the face of former president Donald Trump’s post-election conspiracy theories, lawyer Lin Wood had been embroiled in an acrimonious spat with his former lawyers, who claimed to have caught his “erratic, hostile, abusive, and threatening” behavior on tape.
Several of those recordings became public for the first time on Tuesday with the release of Law&Crime’s new podcast: “Objections” with Adam Klasfeld.
As Law&Crime exclusively reported, Wood’s former law partners claimed they had him caught on tape confessing to assaulting them, threatening them in profane rants, and asserting that he may be “Christ coming back for a second time in the form of an imperfect man.” Several of the recordings were filed in a court in Fulton County, Georgia, where those ex-partners submitted them to substantiate their depictions of Wood flying into fits of rage and self-regard.
“Your law partner Lin Wood is not just good,” Wood can be heard referring to himself in the third person in one of the tapes. “Your law partner Lin Wood has courage and he has an inherent ability to know truth. Your partner Lin Wood is great. You should feel like shit, but I still love you. And I’m still your law partner.”
Those former partners—Nicole Wade, Jonathan Grunberg, and Taylor Wilson—broke up from L. Lin Wood, P.C. in early 2020 to start their own firm Wade, Grunberg & Wilson, LLC, filing a lawsuit alleging breach of a settlement. They claim that Wood fraudulently induced them into signing a deal to split the proceeds of cases they worked on between late 2019 and early 2020.
Around that time, Wood and those ex-partners had been representing Covington Catholic high school student Nicholas Sandmann and British scuba diver Vernon Unsworth, who unsuccessfully sued Tesla magnate Elon Musk for calling him a “pedo guy.”
A day before the release of this episode, Sandmann announced he had terminated Wood as counsel because of the lawyer’s “untrue, unfair, and unfounded” comments about him.
Sandmann posted a message of what appeared to be Wood’s Telegram channel complaining about “politically motivated attacks on my law license” and his expectation that the Covington Catholic student would abandon him.
The partners claim their relationship broke down during this time period, when Wood started referring to himself as a vessel of God, attacked two of them, and spoke about bizarre conspiracy theories about Chief Justice John Roberts and a YouTube video that he viewed as a prophecy.
That aggressive behavior allegedly turned physical.
“I have apologized to Taylor when I pushed him,” Lin Wood can be heard saying on one of the tapes. “It was like evil was in my house.”
Wood can be heard stewing against the same partner in a different recording.
“Taylor Wilson, your former partner, who you have abused and treated like a dog, repeatedly for weeks, if not months,” he complains.
Wood is also accused of attacking Grunberg, who claimed that the pro-Trump lawyer referred to him derisively as a “Chilean Jewish fucking crook.” The batch of files shows them in happier times.
“Number One: I love ya,” Wood can be heard telling Grunberg in a tape. “Number two: Stop the presses. That’s a newspaper phrase. Hold the presses. Nothing’s going to change. Our law firm is meant to be Wood, Wilson, Grunberg and Wade.”
Even though recordings show him referring to them as law partners repeatedly—and archived versions of his website refer to them as that—Wood continues to insist they were just lawyers he mentored.
“I would love to answer each of your questions about the frivolous lawsuit filed against me by the lawyers with whom I formerly shared office space,” Wood told Law&Crime, adding that he could not do so because of a gag order.
Several recordings contradict his efforts to downplay their relationship.
“You’re still my law partners, even if walk out the door. That’s done,” Wood can be heard saying in one.
When pressed on these discrepancies, Wood doubled down: “No other lawyer has ever had a financial interest in L. Lin Wood, P.C. since it was formed in September of 1997. I have at all times been the sole partner.”
Since the 2020 election, Wood has become known for convincing hundreds of thousands of people to disbelieve what they can see and hear: that President Joe Biden won the election, a fact confirmed dozens of times in lawsuits, recounts and audits.
Together with Sidney Powell, Wood was part of the so-called “Kraken” team that claimed Dominion Voting Systems was in cahoots with foreign powers to switch votes in Biden’s favor. Wood had a QAnon slogan on his now-suspended Twitter account that reached nearly 1 million people, and he represented Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, another “Q” adherent.
Before drawing headlines for these beliefs, Wood was known for covering high-profile cases of national prominence. He represented the family of JonBenét Ramsey and Richard Jewell, the man wrongly suspected of setting off a bomb on the Olympics in Atlanta.
Put together, the Wood tapes released for the first time on Law&Crime’s new weekly podcast “Objections” offer a window into a period when some of those closest to him claim to have observed him become hostile, self-destructive and receptive to the lure of conspiracy theories.
[Image via YouTube screengrab]
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