A judge that was appointed by Donald Trump has blocked Lin Wood’s “creative” election lawsuit in Georgia.
U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg on Thursday rejected a lawsuit that Georgia’s assistant attorney general, Russell Willard, warned would roll back people’s voting rights in the state. “The election is over, and rather than accept that his candidate has lost, the plaintiff seeks the largest disenfranchisement in Georgia since the abolition of the poll tax and the vestiges of Jim Crow,” said Willard.
After roughly a two-and-a-half-hour hearing, Grimberg made his decision to reject the lawsuit. “To halt the certification at literally the 11th hour would breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and law,” said Grimberg.
L. Lin Wood, Jr. is a celebrity attorney who has had a hand in several notable cases including defending the alleged victim in the Kobe Bryant case, as well as U.S. Congressman Gary Condit. Wood is currently representing Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse and Marjorie Taylor Green. The website Law & Crime, states that while Wood filed the lawsuit as a Georgia voter, the judge explained that it does not give him grounds to sue. “There is no doubt that the right to vote, even an individual’s right to vote is sacrosanct,” Judge Grimberg added, saying that this “doesn’t mean that individual voters have the right to dictate” how the vote is counted.
The lawsuit comes as Wood claims that Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hurt him as a voter by agreeing to a March settlement agreement on signature matching in ballots. Wood didn’t seem to have any issue when eight months and three election cycles passed by him, and it wasn’t until the President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election that he showed he had a problem. He challenged the agreement on Nov. 13. “His undue delay prejudiced the Secretary of State and certainly prejudiced the millions of voters in this election,” Grimberg ruled.
In response, Willard called the decision sour grapes masquerading as a cause of action. “Plaintiff attempts to change the rules at the end of the game in order to alter the score,” Willard said. “I understand the plaintiff’s frustration that his favored candidate has lost,” he said saying that his issue still doesn’t give him the right to make up claims. “The fact that the candidate or candidates that this plaintiff voted for… did not prevail in an election does not meet the legal standard of harm, much less irreparable harm,” Grimberg found.
