Attorney Lin Wood, one of the most prolific proponents of the false claim that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election due to widespread voter fraud, appears to have turned against the former president and emerged as a state witness in the sprawling extortion case against Trump and 18 other defendants in Georgia Fulton County prosecutors announced Wednesday. Buried in Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis’s 103-page filing arguing that lawyers for Trump’s co-defendants may have conflicts of interest, prosecutors listed Wood as one of the people called “witnesses for the case,” according to The Messenger State” is the case in which the 19 defendants are accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. A special jury had recommended that Wood be indicted, but prosecutors declined.
However, Wood denies any suggestion he made to the former president.
“There’s no truth to that,” Wood told The Hill on Wednesday. “I am always ready to comply with a subpoena. I will testify and answer their questions honestly, just as I did before the grand jury.”
The once-celebrated libel lawyer gained national recognition for representing the parents of murdered child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey and helping vindicate Richard Jewell, a security guard falsely accused of detonating pipe bombs at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
He gave up his law license in July when a disciplinary proceeding — related to his work for Trump allies and associates, which was being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith — threatened to remove him from office. A special grand jury in Georgia also recommended that Wood be criminally charged for his involvement in the alleged scheme, but Willis decided against indicting him.
“I’m probably the second most persecuted person in America, right?” Wood told The Messenger in an interview in July, shortly after he announced his resignation, adding that Trump was first.
After the 2020 election, Wood rose to prominence among proponents of the voter fraud conspiracy theory as his name appeared in Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s legal filings and he represented himself in a separate election-related lawsuit in Georgia. While each of the lawsuits – which Powell had filed in federal courts in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia – were dismissed, a Michigan federal judge overturned a sanctions order requiring Powell, Wood and seven other co-counsels to be disciplined because of their “historic and …”recommended were serious abuses of the court process.”
The Georgia state attorney cited that opinion as a reason for requesting that Woods be barred from practicing law in the state where he was first admitted to the bar in 1977. In his disciplinary proceedings, Wood was accused of breaching a number of professional rules, including the professional rules of scope of representation, fairness to the opposing party, cooperation with disciplinary authorities and publicity in proceedings. Wood’s “contempt” for the judiciary was enough to qualify him for disbarment, Georgia disciplinary counsel Robert Remur argued to the Georgia State Disciplinary Board.
“He accused the Supreme Court, the special master and the attorney for the prosecution of being communists, pedophiles and child traffickers,” Remur told the board earlier this year. “No attorney capable of practicing in this state would make such allegations as counsel in a proceeding in which he signed the brief as self-representing counsel.”
Wood released transcripts of his remarks to the board, indicating that his disciplinary process was well underway and he told The Messenger that he had begun the process of retiring, starting as early as 2019 Lawyer’s license would be revoked, adding that he would instead take up arms in the “court of public opinion.”
“So I’m doing it for myself, because if I – if I get disbarred, which the judge will almost certainly recommend I do – that’s been the goal from day one, even if I don’t care,” said Wood to the board. “I’m retiring. I don’t need a law license to go to heaven, so it means nothing to me; but it is unfair and unjust.”
At the end of the proceedings in May, Special Master Thomas E. Autor III indicated that he would release his report within 45 days of receipt of the minutes. The stenographer certified the document on June 4, signaling that Wood’s fate would likely have been sealed just days after announcing his retirement.
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Legal experts were surprised by Wednesday morning’s revelation of Wood’s collaboration with the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, with some apparently expressing doubts about the effectiveness of the lawyer’s strategy.
“Wow. I didn’t have Lin Wood flipping my bingo card,” Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“’It’s a bold move, Cotton. Let’s see if it works for them,'” added former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, citing the 2004 film “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.”
“If he has documents and everything, sure,” said Georgia State law professor Anthony Michael Kreis. “What if it’s just him? Yes. I don’t know it.”
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