Three lawyers who helped litigate former President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election have been hit with disciplinary charges by the bar association in Washington.
Ms. Haller was involved in attorney Sidney Powell’s “Kraken” lawsuits and later represented a handful of Jan. 6 defendants.
Mr. Johnson also was involved in a number of Powell-related lawsuits, and Mr. Joseph filed a federal lawsuit against then-Vice President Mike Pence, in which he allegedly misrepresented as legitimate a “competing slate” of Republican electors in Arizona who weren’t authorized to serve as such.
The Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which was created by the D.C. Court of Appeals to investigate and prosecute complaints of ethical misconduct against lawyers licensed to practice law in D.C., has asked the board of the bar association to consider whether the three attorneys violated rules of professional conduct and, if so, to “impose/recommend appropriate discipline.”
Election Fraud ‘On a Vast Scale’ Alleged
Investigators cited in the court documents said that the three attorneys filed false claims about election fraud or made other inaccurate representations.
After the states had certified the results of the 2020 presidential election, Ms. Haller and Mr. Johnson filed federal lawsuits against state election offices and state government officials in four states that certified President Joe Biden as the winner: Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
In each of the lawsuits, which sought to overturn the results in those states, the two attorneys alleged the existence of election fraud “on a vast scale as a result of a conspiracy to falsely inflate or increase the vote count in favor of Biden.”
The alleged conspirators included officials from both the Democratic and Republican parties, voting machine manufacturers, local elections workers, state officials, and foreign actors from Iran and China.
They asked for various forms of relief, including decertifying the election results (that had been certified for President Biden), disregarding some votes as illegitimate, or declaring President Trump as the winner.
“Respondents knew or should have known the lawsuits were frivolous,” the court filing states. “They had no plausible factual basis for the claims they made and the relief they sought was unprecedented and beyond the authority of courts to grant.”
The filing also alleged that the lawsuits and claims filed by Ms. Haller and Mr. Johnson had procedural flaws. These included pursuing claims on behalf of plaintiffs who lacked standing or filing untimely claims after the election results were certified.
Slates of Electors
In the matter of Mr. Joseph, investigators allege that after all states and the District of Columbia had certified electoral votes, he and his co-counsel filed a federal lawsuit against then-Vice President Pence.In the complaint, Mr. Joseph claimed that an alternate Republican slate of electors in Arizona had convened in the Arizona state Capitol in line with the requirements of state laws and the Electoral Count Act and had cast their votes for President Trump.
Mr. Joseph made similar claims with regard to Republican electors in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, per the D.C. bar filing.
However, Mr. Joseph knew that the claims about a “competing slate” of electors in these states “had no factual basis and was false,” according to the document.
Mr. Joseph also allegedly knowingly made false claims regarding a “joint resolution” that had supposedly been passed by the Arizona Legislature that found that the election had been marred by significant irregularities and called on Congress not to accept the votes submitted by the official Arizona slate of electors until all the irregularities were resolved.
After a district court dismissed Mr. Joseph’s lawsuit on Jan. 1, 2021, because of lack of standing, he appealed to a higher court, and after the appeal was rejected, he filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately failed.
‘Biggest Story of the Year’
Although Democrats and their allies claim that election fraud is little more than a myth, President Trump has said for years that voter fraud is a pervasive problem in U.S. politics—and insists he was robbed of a win in the 2020 election.The survey shows 17 percent of mail-in voters admitting to voting in a state where they are no longer permanent residents; 21 percent filling out ballots for others; 17 percent signing ballots for family members, possibly without consent; and 8 percent reporting offers of “pay” or “reward” for their vote.
“Taken together, the results of these survey questions appear to show that voter fraud was widespread in the 2020 election, especially among those who cast mail-in ballots,” the Heartland Institute, a conservative and libertarian public policy think tank, said in a statement.
President Trump called the survey’s shocking results “the biggest story of the year” and called on Republicans to “do something about it.”
He also suggested that unless something is done quickly to address the problem of voter fraud, the issue will cast a pall over the 2024 election.
