DENVER (AP) — A federal magistrate on Wednesday levied penalties against two Colorado attorneys for filing a class-action lawsuit that alleged the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
The now-dismissed suit relied on baseless conspiracy theories spread by the former president and his supporters. It named elected officials in four swing states, Facebook, the company’s founder Mark Zuckerberg and Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, whose election machines were at the center of some of the most fevered speculation.
Magistrate Judge N. Reid Nureiter ruled that the two attorneys who filed the lawsuit must pay the legal fees of the defendants.
“The lawsuit put into or repeated into the public record highly inflammatory and damaging allegations that could have put individuals’ safety in danger,” Nureiter wrote, noting the Jan. 6 insurrection was spurred by the lies it repeated, as were threats against election and Dominion officials. “Doing so without a valid legal basis or serious independent personal investigation into the facts was the height of recklessness.”
