A Bad Week for Team Kraken in Court

The Supreme Court snubbed Sidney Powell and a court orders Mike Lindell to pay up.

Last fall, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit largely upheld court ordered sanctions of approximately $150,000 against Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and other members of the "Kraken" legal team that advanced false and frivolous claims in their efforts to challenge the 2020 Presidential election results. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied Powell and Wood's petitions for certiorari without comment. This should end their efforts to oppose these sanctions (though other legal proceedings against Powell and Wood remain ongoing).

Yesterday, a federal judge in Minnesota affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who had offered a $5 million bounty to anyone who could debunk his alleged evidence of Chinese interference in the 2020 election. As I recounted last year:

Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert who had apparently voted for Trump twice, took Lindell up on his challenge. He analyzed the supposed evidence and demonstrated it was a steaming pile of digital detritus, and not evidence of any sort of election interference. Indeed, he showed (as Lindell's terms required) that the data had nothing to do with the 2020 presidential election. Lindell, expectedly, refused to pay, and the matter went to arbitration. There, despite Lindell having written the terms to make recovery difficult, the arbitrators sided with Zeidman.

Lindell refused to pay, so Zeidman took him to court, resulting in yesterday's judgment against the pillowmaker.

According to news reports, Lindell still maintains that he owes nothing, and will appeal. As with the 2020 election, Lindell seems to have a problem with evidence and legal conclusions that do not align with his priors. Also like Powell, Lindell faces other litigation, including defamation claims.

Unfortunately for both Powell and Lindell, they may have to bear the costs of their mounting legal losses themselves. Unlike Donald Trump, they do not have a political party and campaign organizations that will cover their legal costs.

Comments

[John F. Carr]

Powell and Lindell may be on their own. Eastman, on the other hand, does have a fundraising apparatus. I get solicitations for his legal defense fund at least weekly.

[Doug Heffernan]

Doesn't the pillow guy have all of that sweet pillow money? Being on his own shouldn't be as difficult for him as it will be for the kraken lady. He sells a lot of stuff besides pillows now too.

[Noscitur a sociis]

He does (or did) have a lot of money, but he’s also incurred some pretty substantial expenses over the last couple years.

[Doug Heffernan]

Yeah, my mistake. You're correct. Further research reveals that the pillow guy has spent all or most of his pillow money, and new pillow sales are down.

https://apnews.com/article/mike-lindell-mypillow-no-money-election-lawsuits-047932c7207734c080b07dca8d8868a5

[Dave_A]

Pillow guy also has 2 very pissed off voting-machine companies coming after the rest of his money....

[Kazinski]

Eastman was accused of proposing a somewhat farfetched interpretation of a constitutional amendment, which should not be criminal. It was also proposed in the 1876 election and was one of the reasons a compromise was reached installing Hayes.

Should advocating gun control based on the discredited collective rights interpretation of the 2nd Amendment be criminal?

[David Nieporent]

Eastman was — and is — accused of (inter alia) encouraging people to forge electoral votes in support of his "somewhat farfetched interpretation."

[Kazinski]

A process endorsed by Stevens in Bush v Gore to handle election disputes.

[David Nieporent]

It did no such thing, not to mention that there weren't any electoral disputes in 2020. All state elections had been certified.

[Sarcastr0]

Eastman knew he was advocating breaking the law.

He wrote a draft letter that said 'Nowhere does it suggest that the President of the Senate gets to make the determination on his own' prior to making that exact suggestion.

He later requested a pardon.

And of course there's this banger:
“He said he couldn’t reach others,” Herschmann said. “He started to ask me about something dealing with Georgia and preserving something potentially for appeal. And I said to him, ‘Are you out of your f—ing mind? I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: orderly transition. I don’t want to hear any other f—ing words coming out of your mouth no matter what.’”

He said he also gave Eastman some legal advice: “‘Get a great f—ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.’ And then I hung up on him. ”
https://time.com/6188491/john-eastman-jan-6-testimony-trump/

[Darth Buckeye]

Sauce for the goose does not apply in politics. Liberals/Progressives/Democrats should be careful what they wish for, they will get it good and hard. We will start seeing lawfare everywhere. Liberals will sue conservatives in liberal jurisdictions; conservatives will sue liberals in conservative jurisdictions.

[apedad]

#ETTD

[not guilty]

As Groucho Marx said, time wounds all heels.

[Longtobefree]

"Lindell seems to have a problem with evidence and legal conclusions that do not align with his priors."

So Lindell is a democrat?

[Krychek_2]

If that's the standard then I guess Trump must be a Democrat too.

[MaddogEngineer]

Yes
(Why some of us Republicans have never voted for him.)

[Dave_A]

This.
2016 Trump was 'What if Bernie Sanders ran for President... As a Republican'....

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

I think you may need to explain.

New Yorkers always knew the Trumps as part of the corrupt local Democrat machine. It was only relatively recently that Trump figured out just how amazingly gullible Republicans were and switched parties.

[Nige]

This flies in the face of recent history so blatantly it's actually funny.

[Bob from Ohio]

"In Wednesday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim expressed concern about how the panel interpreted what he called a “poorly written contract,” but said courts have only limited authority to overrule arbitration awards" AP story

Even a Clinton judge knows the arbitration stunk.

[Krychek_2]

Arbitration is a stench in the nostrils of the goddess of justice and it's not the Democrats who aren't fixing it. It's Republicans who like it because it makes it that much harder for the little people to get justice against the big guys. That this one time it bit a Republican on the butt might call for some schadenfreude, but if there were any shot at getting arbitration reform through a Congress in which Republicans have a practical veto in each house, the Democrats would already have done so.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I actually agree.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Perhaps the most ringing endorsement of our (good) arbitration system you could ask for.

[Krychek_2]

I could respond in kind by saying that the fact that you think our current system is good indicates that it isn't. Instead I shall ask why depriving people of access to the courts in favor of a system that for most people is cost-prohibitive is a good thing. The first thing I tell a client who has a legitimate case is that they're going to have to come up with 5k in costs to pay the arbitrators. Most of them say thank you and leave at that point. That system may work if it's corporations suing each other, but if you're a consumer who doesn't have 5k lying around, it's far from a good system.

That's even before you have to hope you get an arbitrator who makes the right call on discovery and admissibility issues because his rulings are going to be non-appealable for the most part.

[Kazinski]

Excuse me if I'm skeptical of a lawyer dumping on their competition.

[not guilty]

How is arbitration a lawyer's "competition"? Arbitration often involves lawyers representing the contending parties, so if anything, it is a potential source of income.

[Kazinski]

What's the difference in legal fees for arbitration and a court case? Where much of the expense is in motions, preparing documents and other legal overhead. And while I'd say a lawyer is absolutely essential for a lawsuit, a lawyer is certainly not essential in arbitration, and while the field is tilted towards corporations, its not tilted as severely as in the court system, where the cost of representation often exceeds the amount in dispute.

[Ridgeway]

You're kidding yourself if you think arbitration is some sort of simplified proceeding that does not require lawyers. It is not small claims court.

It is usually just as complex as regular litigation. The only advantages (from a defendant's POV) are that discovery can be somewhat limited (though this can cut both ways) and class actions are usually non available.

On the other hand, you have to pay a substantial filing fee plus pay the arbitrators (who usually bill on the order of $800+ per hour -- and there are often 3 arbitrators, so that is $2400+/hour.)

[Krychek_2]

And it has to be paid up front. You can't float the costs until the case settles or tries. Meaning the client has to have thousands of dollars up front. People of moderate means are simply priced out of it.

[David Nieporent]

A reputable organization like AAA shifts costs in consumer and employment cases to the corporation/employer.

[Jumaira]

I support arbitration for labor matters as 99% of them are lazy women or minorities making bullshit claims of discrimination. Companies should easily be able to go before arbitrators who won't even bother listening to the ghetto lottery applicants.

[Jgalt1975]

ROTFLMMFAO! Lindell wrote the rules of the contest AND the arbitration was conducted by a three-arbitrator panel under the AAA’s rules, meaning Lindell picked one of the arbitrators himself and a second arbitrator was jointly selected by the other two arbitrators, and the arbitrators unanimously ruled against him. (See the actual arbitration award here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/a68b42f4-d5dc-4ff9-b34e-84d52fa3fc32.pdf?itid=lk_inline_manual_11 )

Cry harder you miserable dip.

[Snorkle]

Freedom died this week. If this is allowed to stand, no future American will ever be free to lie to the courts to advance a violent autogolpe with impunity.

And that's on top of New York showing that they think fraud is illegal even when elites do it. What is the world coming to?

[Nige]

Had me in the first bit, not gonna lie.

[grb]

(I'm just happy about learning a new word : autogolpe)

[Roger S]

Okay, the Kraken team could not provide enough evidence to convince courts to reverse the election. But the election was stolen. There were many millions of votes that were cast, collected, and counted improperly. The election count is unverifiable. Trump actually won a majority of the votes cast and counted on Election Day. Until we have verifiable election procedures, elections will continue to be stolen.

[Darwinnie]

So you can’t verify the election counts but you claim it’s certain Trump won?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

These dumbasses are the fans the Volokh Conspirators deserve.

Their ignorance isn't the important part, though. The reason to disdain them is the bigotry that animates them and this blog.

[Roger S]

No, Trump lost. Biden is the President.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

It's not that the Kraken team could not provide enough evidence to convince courts to reverse the election. Lawyers lose all the time. They were sanctioned because they were abusing the court's time with actual nonsense under their "throw shit at the wall" theory. That's why we're talking about them.

There is no legal or moral significance to a vote being counted on election day specifically. You can have any position you want on how to handle various election parameters (vote-by-mail, early voting, overseas voting for troops, same-day registration, voter ID rules, etc.) I don't care enough to argue any of it. But it's obvious that when polls close at 8 or 9PM local time, there's no magic cinderella rule that throws out every vote not counted by midnight.

[Roger S]

Every other civilized country casts and counts their votes on election day. Because the USA does not, most Americans do not trust elections anymore. So yes, there is significance to having transparent elections on election day.

[David Nieporent]

1) You're lying.
2) All Americans trust elections; MAGA do not.
2b) America has never counted all votes on Election Day. It has always taken a week or two to finish and certify election results. It's just that usually the elections aren't so close that we can't confidently identify a winner before the final certification.
3) It is in fact MAGA that is deliberately preventing vote counting from being largely completed on election day, by forbidding precanvassing of mail in ballots until election day. (Florida allows such precanvassing, so despite a large amount of mail in, they get their counts done. But Pennsylvania and Michigan, to name two, GOP legislatures forbid that, so it took a lot longer to process those mail-ins.)

[Roger S]

This CNN poll says 2/3 of Republicans say Biden's win was illegitimate.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-think-2020-election-illegitimate/index.html

Trump does not agree with mail-in voting. 2020 saw far more mail-in voting than was ever allowed before. If every European country can count votes in a day, so can we.

[Dave_A]

Find an European country that has 350 million people, with 10s of thousands of them deployed on military missions around the globe.

There is no reason to 'count the votes in one day'.
Count every ballot postmarked by election day, and rigorously control who actually receives a ballot.

Voting by mail is *more secure* than in-person, since you can't 'stuff the box' - every ballot that goes out has a barcode on the security envelope, and only the number sent out may be returned....

That is one of the most laughable aspects to the Trump 'vote fraud' theory - the claim of 'ballot mules' and forged ballots... Just doesn't work that way....

[Nige]

'If every European country can count votes in a day,'

Which 'every European countries' are those?

[BillEverman]

So it's like an IQ test, and 2/3 or Republicans lost?

[Jumaira]

Voting by mail should be allowed for active duty military only. Not for far Democratic constituents on "disability" who can't leave their homes.

[Nige]

And Trump and his family.

[MollyGodiva]

Do how are disabled people supposed to vote?

[Darth Buckeye]

I think we have a potential “No True Scotsman” fallacy here.

[BillEverman]

And not just "throw shit at the wall," but make claims on the courthouse steps that you don't dare make in the courtroom because they're blatantly untrue.

[Nige]

There is no evidence that the election was stolen, but the election was stolen.

[MollyGodiva]

Number of votes counted on Election Day is an irrelevant number. Total number of votes is what has meaning.

[Roger S]

Federal law says that elections are to be held on Election Day. Good law, too.

[Darth Buckeye]

Total number of votes…and it does not matter how those votes were cast or by whom. We are getting “the Chicago Way” nationwide.

[David Nieporent]

Okay, the Kraken team could not provide enough evidence to convince courts to reverse the election.

They could not provide any evidence to convince courts to reverse the election.

But the election was stolen.

So, like your views on everything else, it's faith-based. Evidence is not only not required, but is actually frowned upon.

There were many millions of votes that were cast, collected, and counted improperly. The election count is unverifiable.

In any election with a secret ballot, the only thing that can be truly "verified" after the election is over is that the number of votes cast equals the number of votes counted. Which was done.

Trump actually won a majority of the votes cast and counted on Election Day.

I thought you just said it was unverifiable. So how do you know that? And what is the relevance of that, anyway?

[Roger S]

The votes cast and counted on Election Day were done according to well-established procedures, and with outside observers. Trump won a majority of those. The early votes, mail-in votes, and late-counted votes were not, and there is no way of knowing how many of those were legitimate.

[David Nieporent]

All votes cast and counted were done according to well-established procedures, and with outside observers.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

With outside Republican observers, no less.

[Dave_A]

The early voting process is just as established as the election day process. Early voting has been around for YEARS before 2020.

The mail in voting process is the established absentee vote counting process…

There was no ‘late vote counting’ – the counting process runs until all votes received by the statutory deadline are counted.

The only thing that changed, is that massively more people used the absentee process, and thus there were more mail ballots (which take longer to count).

It slowed things down, but it did not change how the votes were actually counted, or the legitimacy of that process.

The only reason for the early 'red surge' in election-day voting, was all the bullshit political nonsense encouraging Republicans to blow off COVID precautions.

[Roger S]

Someone can cast a California vote by dropping a ballot in a Timbuktu mailbox on election day.

Lots of states took a week to count the ballots.

[SRG2]

Trump actually won a majority of the votes cast and counted on Election Day

But as a significant number of votes were cast ahead of election day, and some states, most notably Pennsylvania, had a policy of counting in-person votes first, your comment is at best irrelevant and at worst, malignly stupid.

[Roger S]

Pennsylvania has a clause in its constitution banning mail-in votes, with narrow exceptions. Those mail-in votes for Biden should have all been considered illegal.

[David Nieporent]

The Pennsylvania constitution has no such clause. And it was the Republican legislature in 2019 that passed the law to allow no-excuse mail in voting! (Because until the Trumpertantrum of 2020, the conventional wisdom was that absentee voting helped Republicans.)

[Roger S]

This Penn. court said mail-in voting is unconstitutional.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mail-in-voting-ballots-struck-down-pennsylvania/

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

You just keep throwing new shit at the wall, after each previous piece slides down.

[Roger S]

Lots of countries run fair elections. The USA just has to do what they do, and people will accept the results.

[David Nieporent]

That's a lower court. What does the Pennsylvania Supreme Court say? Oh, that it's entirely constitutional.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/02/1099806224/pennsylvania-act-77-supreme-court-decision-mail-in-voting-lawsuit

[Roger S]

The fix is in.

[Stephen Lathrop]

In a better election system, prosecutors could at least check to see if Roger S had sworn an oath to support the Constitution. And if he had, and continued advocacy as he is doing now, charge him with a crime of oath breaking.

However, as seems likely, Roger S had never sworn such an oath, then he could not be charged. His advocacy would be treated instead as coming from a member of the joint popular sovereignty, which rules at pleasure and without constraint.

But even if that were true—and Roger S's lies were not only indulged, but protected as they should be if he speaks as an unsworn member of the joint sovereignty—the nation's election system would have been improved.

People in their capacity as citizens would enjoy assurance that office holders sworn to support the Constitution would neither be moved by the likes of Roger S, nor repeat his lies from seats of power. Thus would be removed a danger of sedition, insurrection, or treason by those best placed to profit from it.

[Roger S]

Yes, opposing the Biden administration puts me in danger of prosecution.

[Dave_A]

It's very easy to do better at in-person voting, when you've spent the past year turning a public health emergency into a political joke...

Democrats observing COVID lockdowns voted by mail... MAGA types who were bullshitted into believing COVID was a hoax voted in person...

Every single media outlet, left or right, was predicting a 'red mirage' because of this nonsense.... And that's exactly what happened.

[Roger S]

There was no medical emergency. The covid lockdowns did not save any lives.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Thousands of corpses were stored in the streets of New York, because of inadequate capacity to inter them as fast as they died, but there was no medical emergency.

[Purple Martin]

Please Roger,

Well before the 2020 elections, whenever and wherever implemented, universal availability of vote-by-mail was becoming quite popular. Between 2000 and 2020 (including what turned out to be a quite ordinary 2020 presidential election with no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud), more than 300 million votes were cast via mailed-out ballots, in all 50 states, with about 200 verified fraud cases over twenty years (only one involving more than a few people and outcome-determinative fraud—a NC Republican US House primary race, identified through pre-existing processes and corrected per existing election law).

In the 2016 presidential election, about 25% of all voters—more than 33 million—voted with ballots mailed to them (and returned either by mail, or dropped off at elections offices, polling places, or dedicated drop-boxes). That wasn't just liberal states—it included 27 of 29 Utah counties; 31 of 53 North Dakota counties; and 40% of Alaska’s voters (the City of Anchorage).

(Most of the numbers here are from the conservative Heritage Foundation's continuing project you can find by searching "heritage election fraud database")

Before 2020, there was barely an issue and "Vote at Home" was rapidly growing in Red, Blue and Purple states. Pre-2020 studies had already shown show, pretty definitively, that vote-by-mail favors neither party. In fact, the biggest demographic who voted by mail were the elderly, who tended to vote Republican. The people who run campaigns were adapting their processes to Vote at Home, especially in Republican states with large elderly populations (Florida and Arizona especially).

But then Trump, as an early part of the Big Lie, came out against mail voting and told his people not to do it. so Trumpists everywhere started yelling Fraud! Cheating! Stolen Election! And what in 2019 was a non-partisan trend everywhere, suddenly became anathema to the sacred Trumpist scriptures.

But, where used, people still like it! A lot! Pretty sure what's eventually going to happen is standardized, near-universal Vote at Home (with the option of early and same-day in-person voting centers for those desiring it) and improvements to vote tabulation processes, practices and methods will increase ballot access, voter turnout, and election accountability across the board.

We should all welcome it.

[BillEverman]

"I have no evidence, but I KNOW."

You must be fun on a jury.

[Kazinski]

I'd say its mostly to the good, Lawyers should know better than going to court when they don't have any evidence to support their allegations.

Lindell is just an idiot, hopefully he learned a lesson.

[Nige]

Chalk up another life pointlessly wrecked on behalf of Trump. It's like a fucking suicide cult, only for careers, reputations, families, fortunes and criminal records.

[Kazinski]

Well the clear lesson is don't be a sycophant for any politician.

The 16% of '24 Biden voters that think Joe profited from Hunter's business deals are another data point.

Then there was also the case of William Jefferson who was re-elected after the FBI found bundles of cash totalling 90k in his freezer.

And all the J6 idiots that over ran the Capitol thinking that was anything other than counterproductive.

[Nige]

‘The 16% of ’24 Biden voters that think Joe profited from Hunter’s business deals are another data point.’

For what? That right-wing complaints about media bias are bullshit and their lies actually get propogated through the MSM quite effectively?

I have no idea what the first two things have to do with the third. Nobody has ruined their life for Biden. The Republicans managed to send one person to jail for Clinton, but that sounds like it was more from personal integrity than personal loyalty. Nobody ruined their life for Hilary Clinton. Nobody ruined their life for Obama. How many people ruined or lost their lives for W Bush because they joined in his drumbeat for disastrous and faked-up wars?

Then there was that Trump guy who blew himself up after the Mar A lago search. Jesus.

[Dave_A]

Jefferson may have been re-elected, but he ended up going to prison....

[Moderation4ever]

While Powell and Lindell have to use their own money for legal defenses, they got into this looking to make money. I suspect that the like of Powell and Lindell thought they could get away with the scheme and are now surprised to find themselves at the losing end of a number of lawsuits. As I have long noted Donald Trump's superpower is the ability to corrupt, Powell and Lindel are the examples and also losers.

[Darth Buckeye]

The irony of the whole Trump situation is rich. The DOJ indicts a witness on the basis that he gave false statements about Biden’s corruption and THAT means that all complaints about Biden’s corruption are false. Would that this same rule applied regarding all the lies told about Trump and the pee tape, or collusion, or any of the other anti-Trump fantasies. And Wisconsin is charging pro-Trump fundraisers with violating campaign finance rules for expenditures amounting to tens of thousands of dollars while ignoring the Zuckerbucks spent amounting to tens of millions of dollars. Lawfare, plain and simple.

Only highly educated fools refuse to see things that average people can’t help but see. It’s no wonder more and more people are losing faith in expert opinions and the law. Bad times are coming.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Do you really not know what it means?

Because a federal indictment usually means the feds have substantial if not overwhelming evidence of the crimes charged. And if that's the case, yes, it probably does mean the "key witness" informant has been caught lying.

Sure, it is theoretically possible that this time, nope, they only have bupkis. It's just not very likely.

But, based on your laundry list of grievances, I doubt that will make any difference to you. You appear to have a psychological need which can only be satisfied by defending Saint Trump from his tormentors.