MSNBC's Joe Scarborough went off on Donald Trump's campaign lawyers who are facing possible sanctions for lying about his election loss in various legal challenges.
Former Trump attorneys Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and others clashed with a federal judge and each other during a six-hour hearing over their lawsuits seeking to overturn Michigan's presidential election results, and the "Morning Joe" host called for them to be disbarred over their ill-fated "Kraken" lawsuit.
"There are conspiracy theories you can find online, whether it's Russian disinformation or comes from a Chinese religious cult that has a front in the United States, or maybe conspiracy theories on Facebook, and for attorneys to actually put that into a pleading, sign their name to it and then put it into federal court -- that's shocking," Scarborough said. "It's shocking for anybody that's ever really practiced law. I always joked when I was an attorney in Florida, I would do state work but when you went in federal courts, something they taught you very early on, you better get all your facts right in those federal pleadings."
Federal courts do not respond kindly to pleadings filed in bad faith, Scarborough said, and he can't believe Trump's legal team made such sloppy counterfactual arguments on a matter of utmost importance.
"I don't think there was a lawyer that started at a law firm that they didn't get that warning," he said. "That was one of the things shocking to me, Rudy Giuliani was filing these things and Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, they would file these crazy lawsuits and I would keep wondering, how are they doing this? How can they get away with this? Because I know if this had happened in northwest Florida, in front of the three federal judges that were there when I was practicing, man, you would have lost your law license in a second. They would have disbarred you in a second."
"I just can't explain to people who aren't attorneys enough how mind-blowingly wild, how radical, how reckless, how stupid it was for these attorneys to put their names on conspiracy theories and then put them in federal court in front of federal judges," he added. "I just wonder why it's taken this long. So, I mean, I'm not surprised by the six-hour hearing. I guess I'm just surprised that it happened in July instead of in March, but the wheels of justice turn slowly and perhaps these lawyers that made a mockery of these federal judges, made a mockery of federal courts, maybe they ultimately will pay the same price that every other attorney in America would pay, if they did the same thing. Let's hope there is justice for all."
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