Three Trump-Allied Attorneys Face Possible Disbarment For Lying In Court To Discredit The 2020 Election

Three lawyers who assisted Trump lawyer Sidney Powell‘s campaign in mounting legal challenges to the 2020 election results have been charged by bar investigators in Washington, D.C. They have been accused of violating disciplinary policies and are facing disciplinary charges.

The attorneys, Juli Haller, Lawrence Joseph and Brandon Johnson, are accused of knowingly making false representations to courts about a series of lawsuits filed in the weeks following the 2020 election. These filings became public in January.

Joseph was involved in a lawsuit filed by former Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) against former Vice President Mike Pence. The lawsuit aimed to pressure Pence to use his power to alter the election outcome according to Donald Trump‘s wishes.

Lower courts rejected the lawsuit, and the Supreme Court ended the case in January 2021.

Haller played a key role in Powell’s “Kraken” lawsuits. These lawsuits aimed to challenge President Joe Biden‘s wins in swing states but were unsuccessful.

Haller represented several defendants of the January 6 riot, including Kelly Meggs, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy. Haller then joined the America First Legal Foundation, a Trump-aligned outfit founded by former White House adviser Stephen Miller.

Johnson joined Haller in Powell-related lawsuits.

The new charges are part of a pattern of disciplinary actions against lawyers who helped Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign lawyer, was reprimanded in Colorado for making false claims regarding election fraud. She later pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case. Ellis later called Trump “a malignant narcissist” whom she regretted ever working for.

John Eastman helped Trump’s attempt to block Biden’s win. He was found guilty of professional misconduct in California. Eastman is waiting for a final judgment.

Rudy Giuliani has been suspended from practicing law in New York and Washington, D.C., for his work for Trump in Pennsylvania during the 2020 election. Giuliani was recently ordered to pay two election workers $148 million for defaming them with false allegations.

A committee of the D.C. Bar will hear the new charges against Haller, Johnson and Joseph. If found guilty, they could face sanctions ranging from reprimand to suspension to disbarment.

Bar investigators found that Haller and Johnson made false claims regarding election fraud. They alleged that Dominion voting machines were tampered with by foreign governments and wealthy individuals.

Courts in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and other states reviewed and dismissed these claims.

The bar investigators said that the attorneys “knew or should have known the lawsuits were frivolous. 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.”

There was a separate set of charges for Joseph. The bar investigators claim that he falsely told courts that groups of pro-Trump presidential electors had been “duly qualified” in a handful of swing states, even though Biden had won.

The investigators say that “he knew that the claims about a ‘competing slate’ of electors in Arizona (as well as the slates in other ‘Contested States’) had no factual basis and was false. The state legislature in Arizona had not permitted, authorized, or endorsed the Republican slate of electors as competing or alternative electors for the state.”

Haller and Johnson faced disciplinary actions in other states due to their involvement in 2020 election lawsuits. A federal appeals court upheld sanctions against Powell and her supporters in Michigan.