Michigan’s Democrat Attorney General, Dana Nessel, says she is pursuing sanctions and even disbarment against Sidney Powell and other pro-Trump attorneys who she says “wasted the court’s time” with “baseless” allegations of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.
Nessel, who before being elected Attorney General worked as an LGBT rights attorney, says that sanctions against Powell and others who brought allegations of massive election tampering and fraud to Michigan’s courtrooms do not go far enough and claims that pro-Trump attorneys have violated their constitutional oaths and should be permanently banned from practicing law in the state.
“These are flagrant lies that Ms. Powell is submitting to, of all places, the United States Supreme Court in some cases. It’s disturbing and it undermines our entire profession, and she has to be held accountable,” Nessel told Detroit reporters. “We’d be asking there be action taken against her law license including potential disbarment.”
Nessel also says that the attorneys should be forced to pay court costs for election-related lawsuits.
In addition to Powell, Nessel has named attorney Matthew DePerno as one of her targets. DePerno, a Michigan-based constitutional attorney, represented voters in Antrim County after Dominion Voting Systems software was found to have shifted more than 6,000 votes for President Trump over to Joe Biden’s column, flipping the election’s outcome countywide.
Though Nessel has made an effort to portray her attacks against Powell and others as a sort of puritanical defense of the legal system, most believe that political motivation lies at their core, as Nessel has been a long-term and vocal opponent of President Trump.
Just days following Election Day and before virtually any arguments had been heard in court, Nessel had already blanketed legal challenges in contested states with the descriptor of “baseless,” and has compared election protestors to the Mafia. In May of this year, she publicly referred to President Trump as a “petulant child who refuses to follow the rules,” for not wearing a mask during a portion of his visit to a Michigan Ford plant.
In addition to Nessel’s efforts to take down pro-Trump attorneys, Wayne County’s Robert Davis, a convicted felon, is also seeking their disbarment. Davis, who served 18 months in federal prison for stealing $200,000 from schoolchildren, has been labeled a “serial litigator” by locals – though he fancies himself a “government watchdog” and “crusader.”
“It is unfathomable that licensed attorneys would deliberately file false and misleading affidavits and pleadings with the Court in an effort to disenfranchise millions of Michigan residents,” wrote Davis in a court filing. “Not only should these individuals and their attorneys be assessed financial sanctions, but they also should be barred from practicing in the federal courts in the Eastern District of Michigan.”