King v. Whitmer CIVIL 20-13134 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 25, 2021) II. Sanctions Motions The State Defendants and Intervenor-Defendants rely on 28 U.S.C. § 1927, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11, and the Court's inherent authority as the sources for sanctioning Plaintiffs and/or their counsel. In this section, the Court summarizes the arguments made in each sanctions motion. In the next section, the Court discusses the law that applies to each source of authority. A. Governor Whitmer & Secretary of State Benson The State Defendants seek sanctions against Plaintiffs' counsel under § 1927 or, alternatively, the Court's inherent authority. The State Defendants contend that sanctions are appropriate pursuant to § 1927 for two reasons. “First, Plaintiffs' counsel unreasonably and vexatiously multiplied the proceedings in this litigation by failing to dismiss the case when their claims became moot, which plainly occurred upon the vote of Michigan's electors on December 14, if not earlier.” (ECF No. 105 at Pg ID 4337.) “[S]econd, Plaintiffs' counsel knew or should have known that their legal claims were frivolous, but counsel pursued them nonetheless, even after the Court's opinion concluding that Plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims for multiple reasons, ” which included “the weakness of their legal claims and the lack of factual support.” (Id. at Pg ID 4367.) And, the State Defendants argue, sanctions pursuant to the Court's inherent authority are appropriate because “Plaintiffs' claims were meritless, their counsel should have known this, and their real motive in filing suit was for an improper purpose.” (Id. at Pg ID 4369-74.) In a supplemental brief filed in support of their motion for sanctions on April 6, 2021, the State Defendants also identify three specific allegations that they contend were not well-grounded in fact: 1. “‘[T]he absentee voting counts in some counties in Michigan have likely been manipulated by a computer algorithm,' and [] at some time after the 2016 election, software was installed that programmed tabulating machines to ‘shift a percentage of absentee ballot votes from Trump to Biden.'” 2. “Smartmatic and Dominion were founded by foreign oligarchs and dictators to ensure computerized ballotstuffing and vote manipulation to whatever level was needed to make certain Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez never lost another election.” 3. “The several spikes cast solely for Biden could easily be produced in the Dominion system by preloading batches of blank ballots in files such as Write-Ins, then casting them all for Biden using the Override Procedure (to cast Write-In ballots) that is available to the operator of the system.” (ECF No. 118-2 at Pg ID 4804-05 (citing ECF No. 6 at Pg ID 874 ¶ 5, 916-17 B. City of Detroit The City seeks sanctions against Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs' counsel for violating Rule 11. The City first argues that the Complaint was filed for an improper purpose, in contravention of Rule 11(b)(1). The City supports this assertion by pointing to (i) the hurdles that previously barred Plaintiffs' success, including Eleventh Amendment immunity, mootness, laches, standing, and the lack of merit as to the claims under the Constitution and state statutory law; (ii) the lack of seriousness and awareness of deficiency evinced by Plaintiffs' failure to serve Defendants before this Court hastened them via its December 1, 2020 text-only order; and (iii) Plaintiffs' counsel's attempt “to use this Court's process to validate their conspiracy theories, ” “undermin[e] our democracy, ” and 6