Supreme Court rejects appeals from Trump-allied ‘Kraken’ lawyers sanctioned for election lies

The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Donald Trump-allied lawyers who faced legal sanctions for promoting bogus litigation surrounding his 2020 presidential election loss.

A rejection from the nation’s highest court on Tuesday will leave in place a 2023 ruling from a federal appeals court in Michigan that upheld the sanctions against them.

Sidney Powell and Lin Wood – among a team of so-called “Kraken” attorneys who pursued bogus legal efforts to overturn Mr Trump’s loss in 2020 – faced legal consequences in federal court in 2021 for a spurious lawsuit to reject Michigan’s results.

A ruling that year from US District Judge Linda Parker stated that the attorneys’ lawsuit was based on “speculation, conjecture, and unwarranted suspicion” and ordered them to pay more than $175,000 in sanctions to the state.

Last year, an appeals court left the ruling in place but lowered the amount owed.

The decision from the nation’s highest court on Tuesday did not include a reasoning, which is typical for orders without any noted dissents.

“It is one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election,” Judge Parker wrote in her ruling in 2021. “It is another to take on the charge of deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated. This is what happened here.”

This is a developing story