In a new court filing responding to a motion for the right-wing attorneys to be sanctioned, the lawyers’ attorney Donald Campbell used Trump’s allegations of voter fraud to hit back against the argument that the lawyers should be sanctioned for not doing their “due diligence” to ensure their affidavits supposedly demonstrating widespread voter fraud were factually accurate.
“The Attorneys are not the only individuals who viewed these affidavits as evidence of serious fraud,” Campbell argued, saying members of two branches of government, including then-president Trump, also “were insisting that there was massive voter fraud.”
“Millions” of Americans believed the voter fraud claims and “believed that their president would not intentionally mislead them,” Campbell said, suggesting any alleged failure on Powell and the other attorneys’ part to vet their voter fraud evidence was because of “confirmation bias” since high-level people like Trump agreed with their claims.
Campbell defended the lawsuit’s purported evidence of fraud—which the judge in the case criticized as being “fantastical” and based on “levels of hearsay”—claiming the pro-Trump attorneys “did, in fact, vet the affidavits” and assessed their “veracity and legal significance” despite the allegations they didn’t.
“Of course, attorneys should look beyond their prejudices and political beliefs, and view evidence with a level of professional skepticism. But no one is immune to confirmation bias,” Campbell wrote. “The attorneys didn’t just have suspicions based merely on their own beliefs. They had evidence that those working at the highest levels of the United States government shared their suspicions. That context makes this case exceptional—and it is a reason for the Court to deny their defendants’ and intervenors’ requests for sanctions.”