Lawyer who filed suit to reverse 2020 election results referred by judge for discipline

An attorney who filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in at least five battleground states was officially referred on Friday to receive potential disciplinary action. 

In the court order, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg for the District of Columbia argued that the lawsuit brought by Minnesota lawyer Erick Kaardal on behalf of voters in several states contained “numerous shortcomings,” including the “flimsiness of the underlying basis for the suit.”

Boasberg added that the action requested by the lawsuit “to invalidate the election and prevent the electoral votes from being counted” is “staggering.” 

“When any counsel seeks to target processes at the heart of our democracy, the Committee may well conclude that they are required to act with far more diligence and good faith than existed here,” the judge added. 

Boasberg said that Kaardal’s explanations for bringing the lawsuit were inadequate, adding that the attorney will be referred to the court’s Committee on Grievances “so that it may determine whether discipline is appropriate.” 

The Washington court’s grievance committee oversees complaints against attorneys that could warrant actions such as disbarment, suspension, censure or some other type of reprimand. 

The lawsuit was filed in late December by voters from five battleground states won by President Biden— Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

The lawsuit argued debunked claims that widespread election fraud altered the outcome of the elections in those states, and that longstanding federal and state elections laws were unconstitutional. 

Boasberg early last month rejected the lawsuit and denied the group’s request for a preliminary injunction against Congress and former Vice President Mike Pence, in his capacity as president of the Senate, from certifying the results of the election.

Boasberg, an Obama appointee, wrote in his ruling at the time that the attorneys involved could be subject to sanctions, adding it was “not a stretch to find a serious lack of good faith here.” 

“Courts are not instruments through which parties engage in such gamesmanship or symbolic political gestures,” Boasberg added. 

The judge wrote in his Friday order that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit “spend scores of pages cataloguing every conceivable discrepancy or irregularity in the 2020 vote in the five relevant states,” adding, that “the only reason the Court can see for the Complaint to spend 70+ pages on irrelevant allegations of fraud, not one instance of which persuaded any court in any state to question the election’s outcome, is political grandstanding.”

The lawsuit was one of several from Trump’s allies thrown out by courts in the aftermath of the 2020 election.