Democratic Party Attorney and consigliere Marc Elias, the attorney who played a key role in the discredited 2016 election's Steele dossier, is in trouble yet again post election. Elias and other lawyers at his firm have been sanctioned by the Fifth Circuit.
⚠️⚠️⚠️ Democrat lawyer leading the charge to overturn #IA02 was sanctioned by federal court for violating ethics rules ⬇️ https://t.co/A3DIoTMNnO
— House Admin. Committee GOP (@HouseAdmnGOP) March 15, 2021
As reported by Bloomberg:
One of the Democratic party’s top election lawyers was hit with sanctions by a federal court for violating ethics rules in a suit against Texas over straight-ticket voting, a rare rebuke for a seasoned attorney following months of tumultuous litigation over the November election.
Marc Elias and other lawyers with Perkins Coie LLP were ordered Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans to pay legal fees and “double costs” to Texas. The order was issued in a suit Elias filed in August on behalf of the Democrats’ Senate and congressional campaign committees.
The opinion issued by the Fifth Circuit explained:
Appellees did not notify the court that their latest motion to supplement the record filed on February 10, 2021 was nearly identical to the motion to supplement the record filed several months ago by the same attorneys, on September 29, 2020. Critically, Appellees likewise failed to notify the court that their previous and nearly identical motion was denied. This inexplicable failure to disclose the earlier denial of their motion violated their duty of candor to the court. Moreover, to the extent that their motion, without directly saying so, sought reconsideration of their already denied motion, the motion was filed beyond the fourteen-day window for filing motions for reconsideration set forth in Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 40(a)(1) and Fifth Circuit Rules 27.2 and 40, and they did not seek permission to file out of time.
Appellees’ only explanation for their redundant and misleading submission is that they construed the original denial of their motion to supplement the record as an order that applied only to the emergency stay proceedings. However, Appellees’ original motion to supplement the record on appeal was not limited to the stay proceeding, nor was the order denying it so limited. There is no legal basis to support Appellees’ post hoc contention that motions to supplement the record apply only to one stage of an appeal.
If Appellees had any confusion about the application of the order, they could have and should have disclosed the previously denied motion in their new motion. Moreover, after Appellant notified Appellees that they intended to file a motion for sanctions based on this lack of candor and violation of local rules, Appellees could have withdrawn their motion. But they did not. Instead, they stood by a motion that multiplied the proceedings unreasonably and vexatiously.
Much like the story of the Steele dossier, Elias will undoubtedly try to distance himself from the sanctions issued by the court. But while Elias has tried to deny the ethical issues of the Steele dossier to a sympathetic press, the Fifth Circuit was not nearly as gullible or forgiving.
Elias is currently trying to unseat a duly elected Member of Congress, Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa. Hopefully, Congress will see Elias' efforts for what they really are, an attempt to undermine another election.