A Michigan attorney who helped Sidney Powell file her election-related lawsuits said he shouldn’t face consequences for his role.
Gregory Rohl, a trial attorney based in Michigan, was “holding the fort” for Powell and shouldn’t be sanctioned or disbarred, he wrote in a federal court affidavit, according to Business Insider. On the day before Thanksgiving, while he was quarantining at home following a COVID-19 diagnosis, he was contacted by “an associate” who asked if he’d help “in litigation involving alleged election fraud in Michigan which is being spearheaded by Sidney Powell and Lin Wood,” he said in the affidavit.
Rohl agreed to be a local counsel because he found the legal filings from Powell and Wood to be “compelling” and the complaint led him to believe that “if true,” it would likely mean “there was some form of corruption of the electoral process in. Michigan by either internal or external forces,” the affidavit read. He also explained that he had made “no additions, deletions, or corrections to the complaint or affidavits.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, state Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson filed complaints looking into sanctions against him, Powell, Scott Hagerstrom, and Stefanie Junttila. Powell, who is a registered lawyer in Texas, was unable to file a lawsuit in Michigan, which is why she looked to local attorneys to file the Michigan election suits.
“These lawyers must be held accountable for betraying the trust placed in them as members of the bar,” Nessel said. “Lawyers bear a special responsibility to uphold the rule of law, and these lawyers have done the opposite. By pursuing this suit that had no basis in either fact or law, they have only fueled the fire of distrust in our democracy that led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. We are asking the court to enforce the rules and hold these lawyers to their oaths for the protection of the public and to restore faith in our system of law — a system they deliberately undermined.”
Powell and Wood filed dozens of lawsuits (nicknamed the “Kraken”) alleging voter fraud and a mass conspiracy, claiming President Biden was not the legitimate winner of the presidential election. None of the lawsuits succeeded in court. Powell has since been sued for promoting conspiracy theories about one election company.
