Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed a bar complaint against Sidney Powell

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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed a bar complaint against Sidney Powell, asking that she be stripped of her law license

By Jacob Shamsian



Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed a bar complaint against election conspiracy theorist lawyer Sidney Powell Monday, asking the state bar in Texas and Michigan to strip her of her ability to practice law.

"She did not just tiptoe near a precarious ethical line — she outright crossed it," Whitmer wrote in the complaint. "By filing a frivolous lawsuit based on false statements and by brazenly attempting to disenfranchise Michigan voters during the recent presidential election, she engaged in grave attorney misconduct."

Whitmer was joined by two of Michigan's other top state officials, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who filed their own bar complaints. They ask that the Texas state bar, where Powell is admitted to practice, take away Powell's law license after she filed multiple failed, conspiratorial lawsuits arguing that election technology companies rigged the 2020 presidential election by secretly switching votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden — a far fetched scheme she said was linked to China, Iran, and the now-dead Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. They also filed complaints against Greg Rohl, Scott Hagerstrom, and Stefanie Junttila, all colleagues of Powell involved in the effort.

Powell filed the lawsuits after then-President Donald Trump kicked her off his campaign's legal team in late November, when she spouted the theories at a press conference his campaign hosted. She went on to ask federal courts to overturn election results in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin — all states Trump lost.

Those lawsuits, along with around 40 others filed by Trump and his allies, all failed. Biden was inaugurated as president on January 20.

Powell and Rudy Giuliani, a fellow election conspiracy theorist who fought to overturn election results on Trump's behalf, have been targeted by campaigns to have them disbarred. The City of Detroit is also seeking court sanctions against Powell after her failed attempt to throw out the city's votes.

She also faces other legal troubles. Dominion Voting Systems, an election-technology company she falsely said was at the center of the effort to manipulate votes, filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against her in federal court.

Even after Powell's lawsuits failed, she pushed Trump to directly intervene so that he could secure a second term. In an Oval Office meeting reported by Axios, she told him to issue an executive order to seize voting machines and then appoint her as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud. Neither of those things happened.

Whitmer said Powell's lawsuits were an abuse of the legal system — an analysis legal ethics experts concur with.

"Ms. Powell has abused the trust the State Bar of Texas placed in her," Whitmer wrote. "She filed a complaint based on falsehoods, used her law license in an attempt to disenfranchise Michigan voters and undermine the faith of the public in the legitimacy of the recent presidential election, and lent credence to untruths that led to violence and unrest. In doing so, she violated both her attorney oath and the rules of professional conduct that govern the practice of law."

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