Trump Lawyer Slinks Off To Retirement Before He Can Be Disbarred

This outcome falls into several categories, such as "everything Trump touches dies" and "fuck around and find out":

Attorney Lin Wood, who filed legal challenges seeking to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, is relinquishing his law license, electing to retire from practicing rather than face possible disbarment. Multiple states have weighed disciplining him for pushing Trump’s false claims that he defeated Joe Biden.

On Tuesday, Wood asked officials in his home state of Georgia to “retire” his law license in light of “disciplinary proceedings pending against me.” In the request, made in a letter and posted on his Telegram account, Wood acknowledges that he is “prohibited from practicing law in this State and in any other state or jurisdiction and that I may not reapply for admission.”  [snip]

In the wake of the 2020 election, Trump praised Wood as doing a “good job” filing legal challenges seeking to overturn his loss, though Trump’s campaign at times distanced itself from him. Dozens of lawsuits making such allegations were rejected by the courts across the country.

Officials in Georgia had been weighing whether to disbar Wood over his efforts, holding a disciplinary trial earlier this year. Wood sued the state bar in 2022, claiming the bar’s request that he undergo a mental health evaluation as part of its probe violated his constitutional rights, but a federal appeals court tossed that ruling, saying Wood failed to show there was “bad faith” behind the request.  [snip]

Other attorneys affiliated with efforts to keep Trump in power following his 2020 election loss have faced similar challenges. Attorney John Eastman, architect of that strategy, faces 11 disciplinary charges in the State Bar Court of California stemming from his development of a dubious legal strategy aimed at having then-Vice President Mike Pence interfere with the certification of Biden’s victory.

May his "retirement" not be golden.

Losing your license also may be the least of the problems facing the Malignant Loser's "attorneys." Rudy "Toot Toot" Giuliani and Sidney Powell have already been sanctioned by federal courts for their roles in covering up for the Malignant Loser in various investigations.  More seriously, Special Counsel Jack Smith appears to be targeting the Malignant Loser's "attorneys," including Wood, Rudy and Powell for the roles they played in the failed 2020 election coup attempt/ fake electors scheme.  

These misfits are due all the dishonor and opprobrium to which they have and will be subject; some time in the slammer would be true justice, though, given their eager participation in the first (and hopefully last) attempted coup in the nation's history.  Fingers and toes crossed.

BONUS:  Giuliani has now been recommended for disbarment in Washington, DC.  It's a start.

(Image:  Three stooges: Wood, Giuliani, Powell/ MSNBC/ Reuters; Getty)

The Freaks Are Feasting On Each Other

Eventually, delusion, paranoia and brain worms just take over what little there is in the MAGA/ low- IQAnon / fascist mind, conspiracies beget conspiracies, and uncivil "civil wars" are waged.  Let's feast on their fighting:

On Saturday night, pro-Trump lawyer and QAnon booster Lin Wood released a recording of what purports to be a phone call between Wood and Flynn on Telegram. The audio’s publication comes amid a right-wing civil war pitting Wood against one-time allies like Flynn and other figures involved in the 2020 attempt to overturn the election.

In the call, Wood complains to Flynn that his QAnon supporters had attacked Wood online. But Flynn attempts to disown QAnon, claiming it’s a “disinformation campaign” created by the CIA.

“I think it’s a disinformation campaign,” Flynn said on the call. “I think it’s a disinformation campaign that the CIA created. That’s what I believe. Now, I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s what I think it is. I think it’s a disinformation campaign.”

Later in the recording, Flynn called QAnon “total nonsense.”

“I find it total nonsense,” Flynn said. “And I think it’s a disinformation campaign created by the left.”  [snip]

Wood’s publication of the audio comes as part of a growing feud between Wood and Flynn and other figures active in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The fight kicked off last week when recently acquitted Kenosha shooting defendant Kyle Rittenhouse, a former Wood client, accused Wood in a Fox News interview of deliberately keeping him in jail to raise money off of his case.

Suddenly under attack by Rittenhouse, Wood grew publicly furious that allies like Flynn and pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell weren’t strenuously defending him. The ensuing clash has consumed QAnon and other far-right communities over the past week, while Wood grows increasingly hostile, even claiming at one point that a plane he was set to take a flight on was sabotaged in an attempt to kill him.

At roughly the same time, loyal MAGAt Steve Cortes was fired from uber- right- wing Newsmax:

Former Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes is out at Newsmax and will host his last primetime broadcast for the right-wing cable channel early next week, if not sooner, five sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast.

Tensions between Cortes and the MAGA cable network had long been simmering, sources suggested, but it was the Trump loyalist’s vehement disagreement—which he wasn’t shy about publicly voicing—with Newsmax’s company-wide vaccine rules that was the final straw. [snip]

“I will not comply w/ any organization’s attempt to enforce Biden’s capricious & unscientific Medical Apartheid mandate,” he blared in one tweet. “I will not be forced into the injection, nor will I disclose my vaccination status. No one should be pressured to choose between medical privacy & their job.”

Cortes publicly bashing his employer’s decision may have been the final straw, but insiders said the former Trump campaign strategist and ex-CNN contributor has long conflicted with Newsmax.

“It’s been ongoing for a while,” one current Newsmax staffer told The Daily Beast, adding that Cortes is “a constant risk” due to his penchant for making controversial and inflammatory comments.

“He’s on a delay. Can’t trust him,” the staffer further noted, claiming Cortes’ nightly program utilizes a broadcast delay to give the network an opportunity to censor potentially inappropriate content.  (our emphasis)

Then there's the split among low- IQAnon adherents as to whether John F. Kennedy, Jr., is still alive and ready to join the Malignant Loser in his quest to regain the presidency:

The theory is strange even by the standards of QAnon – which claims Democrats and Hollywood celebrities are involved in a secret cannibalistic cult which Donald Trump is secretly battling, a theory expounded in cryptic internet messages by a mysterious prophet-like figure known as Q. And while only a fraction appear to believe the JFK Jr angle, experts say it is still damaging to their relationships and their grasp on reality.

Will Sommer, author of the upcoming book Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Reshaped America and a longtime observer of the conspiracy theory, estimates that about 20 per cent of Q followers believe in JFK Jr’s re-emergence, but that those who do, “100 per cent believe”.

“QAnon itself is obviously pretty dangerous. It’s hard to say whether the people who believe the JFK Jr [conspiracy] are more dangerous than the QAnon people who don’t,” he told The Independent.

To settle things, our modest proposal is that everyone adhering to these "theories" and half- baked "beliefs" -- anti- vaxxers, low -IQAnon, Stop the Steal- ers, etc. -- need to engage in hand- to- hand combat, with appropriate medieval weaponry, with no quarter given!  Last person standing will get the handsome hat pictured above.

The Kraken Krackpot Krack-Up

ICYMI, Judge turns the Kraken into sushi:

The team of “Kraken” attorneys who sought to overturn the 2020 election “scorned their oath, flouted the rules, and attempted to undermine the integrity of the judiciary along the way,” according to a Wednesday opinion from a Detroit federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Linda Parker for the Eastern District of Michigan referred the team of lawyers — who sought to overturn the election in courts through a series bogus claims — for suspension or disbarment while granting requests for sanctions.

Parker also ordered the “Kraken” team — which included Trump-aligned lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood — to pay for legal fees for the city of Detroit and state of Michigan, and referred them for “at least twelve (12) hours of continuing legal education in the subjects of pleading standards (at least six hours total) and election law (at least six hours total).”

Parker wrote in the ruling that the “Kraken” lawyers had tried to create a “haze of confusion, commotion, and chaos” around the election.

“And this case was never about fraud — it was about undermining the People’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so,” Parker wrote.  [snip]

“It is not acceptable to support a lawsuit with opinions, which counsel herself claims no reasonable person would accept as fact and which were ‘inexact,’ ‘exaggerate[ed],’ and ’hyperbole,’” Parker wrote. “Nor is it acceptable to use the federal judiciary as a political forum to satisfy one’s political agenda. Such behavior by an attorney in a court of law has consequences.”

In her closing, Parker found that all of the “Kraken”‘s actions — when taken in sum — added up to a basic truth: that “once it appeared that their preferred political candidate’s grasp on the presidency was slipping away, Plaintiffs’ counsel helped mold the predetermined narrative about election fraud by lodging this federal lawsuit based on evidence that they actively refused to investigate or question with the requisite level of professional skepticism.”

Disbarring or suspending these bonkers shysters should be the least of their punishment (though Powell, Rudy "Toot Toot" Giuliani, and My Mein Pillow's Mike Lindell are each facing $1.3 billion defamation lawsuits) -- especially since Powell remains recalcitrant, saying "We would file the same complaints again." That'll be hard to do if you're no longer allowed to practice law, Ms. Kraken, Esq.

(Photo: Krackpot Kraken team Sidney Powell and Lin Wood)