It might be an understatement to say Monday's federal court hearing in the Eastern District of Michigan on whether pro-Trump lawyers should be sanctioned for filing a reckless election fraud lawsuit did not disappoint. In fact, it might have qualified as hysterically funny but for the fact that more than half of GOP voters now delusionally believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump due to the firehose of lies spewed by him and his so-called "elite strike force" team of lawyers.
In case anyone needs a visual for the way U.S. District Judge Linda Parker picked apart the fraud case filed last year by Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and their co-counsel—Stefanie Junttila, Scott Hagerstrom, Julia Haller, Brandon Johnson, Donald Campbell, Howard Kleinhendler, and Gregory Rohl—just flash back to Rudy Giuliani's literal meltdown at a November press conference in which he claimed to have extensive evidence of systemic election fraud. For starters, here's a live tweet Monday morning from Daily Beast political reporter Will Sommer: "Probably not a great sign for Lin Wood and Sidney Powell in their election fraud sanctions hearing that one of their main lawyers appears to be crying."
That gives one a decent sense of how things went for Team Kraken: not great. If you're a glutton for punishment, you can treat yourself to loads of entertaining threads from analysts parsing the proceedings here, here, here, and here, among others.
The hearing kicked off with Wood, a staunch Trump loyalist who has spewed gobs of baseless election fraud nonsense, seeking to separate himself from other members of the pro-Trump legal squad. Wood tried to make the argument that he had no idea he had been included on the filing.
"I did not review any of the documents with respect to the complaint," Wood said. "I just had no involvement in it whatsoever," he added, saying he only found out his name was included after the complaint had already been filed.
Powell then told Judge Parker she wouldn't have added Wood's name to the complaint without his permission.
"Might there have been a misunderstanding? That's certainly possible," Powell explained.
Oh, so Kraken-pot lead Sidney Powell didn't even get the cover page of the filing right? Parker said she would allow Wood to make a supplemental argument, but it was basically all downhill from there.
The long and the short of it is that the Team Kraken did little-to-no vetting of the 960 affidavits they filed in support of their November lawsuit challenging Michigan's election results.
At the hearing, Powell wielded the number as a point of pride.
"The very fact that we filed 960 affidavits with our complaint shows extraordinary due diligence on our part," she told the judge, according to The Independent reporter Andrew Feinberg.
Judge Parker later framed one such affidavit, that of Jessica Connarn, as based on triple-hearsay—not exactly the building blocks of a killer legal case.
Naturally, Kleinhendler denied it was hearsay, according to Courthouse News reporter Adam Klasfeld, saying he was "troubled" that Judge Parker believes it was.
"Oh really," Judge Parker replied. (Parker was just one of several judges who found the affidavit to be hearsay.).
The Kraken-pot team also made a habit of interrupting and talking over the judge, flying in the face of the conventional wisdom that one might want to show respect for the judge presiding over one's fate in a case.
At one point, Donald Campbell cut off Judge Parker to express frustration his frustration at her handling of the hearing. "I'm sorry, judge, can I finish?" he asked.
In fact, Campbell managed to cross Parker several times during the hearing, according to The Washington Post. “It’s called a evidentiary hearing," he explained to her in one moment.
Later in the hearing, Parker told Campbell, “I would caution you to not question my procedure. I’m here to question what you’ve done, sir.”
Campbell shot back, “But I am not a potted plant. I am not a potted plant. I will represent my client.”
Well played, sir.
Ultimately, Parker gave the lawyers 14 days to file supplemental briefs in the case. It's pretty hard to see how most of the defendants repair the damage they did to themselves. But Wood apparently decided he had to have the last word on the day.