Misconduct hearing set for lawyers who attempted to overturn 2020 Michigan election
Lansing — A group of seven lawyers who were involved in an unsuccessful lawsuit to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential election will face a May 7 misconduct hearing in Detroit, according to notices sent out last week by the state’s Attorney Discipline Board.
The upcoming hearing, which will likely focus on conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 election, which Republican President Donald Trump lost, has been years in the making and will come about six months after the 2024 election, which Trump won.
The hearing could lead to penalties, such as a public reprimand or license suspension, for some of the most vocal proponents of the past legal effort to reverse Trump’s 2020 defeat, including Texas lawyer Sidney Powell and Georgia lawyer Lin Wood.
In addition to Powell and Wood, lawyers Scott Hagerstrom of Michigan, Julia Haller of Washington, D.C., Brandon Johnson of Washington, D.C., Howard Kleinhendler of New York and Gregory Rohl of Michigan are also scheduled to participate in the hearing on May 7, according to the Attorney Discipline Board notices.
The seven were among a group of lawyers who worked on a November 2020 lawsuit in federal court in Michigan that attempted to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in the state based on a bevy of murky theories and fraud claims that had been contradicted by election experts.
Powell once described the national legal push to challenge the election as releasing the “kraken.”
The suit seeking to overturn the election represented “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process,” Detroit U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker wrote in her August 2021 decision to require sanctions against the lawyers who worked on the litigation.
Powell has previously argued the legal team had a duty to raise difficult issues on behalf of their clients.
“We have practiced law with the highest standards,” Powell said in 2021. “We would file the same complaints again. We welcome an opportunity to actually prove our case. No court has ever given us that opportunity.”
In May 2023, the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, the prosecutorial arm of the Michigan Supreme Court, filed a formal complaint with the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board about the lawyers. The commission said the lawyers involved in the November 2020 lawsuit engaged in conduct “that is contrary to justice, ethics, honesty or good morals,” according to the complaint.
At the upcoming hearing, a panel of attorneys will determine whether there’s sufficient evidence to support the charges of misconduct. If charges of misconduct are established, the panel must conduct a second phase of the hearing to determine the appropriate discipline, according to the Attorney Discipline Board’s website.
The parties have until April 30 to submit witness lists for the hearing, according to the new notices.
cmauger@detroitnews.com
