Judge disciplines Colorado lawyers for 'fantastical' election-fraud suit: 'The stuff of which violent insurrections are made'

(Correction: The headline for this article previously claimed that Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker were "pro-Trump lawyers." The attorneys contend they are nonpartisan and do not advocate for Donald Trump.)

In a blistering 68-page opinion, a federal judge on Wednesday sanctioned two Colorado attorneys for filing a "fantastical" lawsuit alleging the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump.

U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter ordered the attorneys, Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker, to pay the legal fees of the 18 entities listed as defendants in their class-action suit that was dismissed in April, including Facebook and Dominion Voting Systems, the Washington Post reports.

Referring to the "bad-faith" lawsuit as "one enormous conspiracy theory," Neureiter said the attorneys made little effort to substantiate their wild allegations — including a tweet from the former president claiming Dominion "deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide," which the judge called "highly disputed and inflammatory."

"In short, this was no slip-and-fall at the local grocery store," Neureiter wrote. "Albeit disorganized and fantastical, the Complaint's allegations are extraordinarily serious and, if accepted as true by large numbers of people, are the stuff of which violent insurrections are made."

The case is one of several nationwide in which attorneys who filed lawsuits pushing Trump's false claims of election fraud could face sanctions. Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, had his law license suspended in New York in June. And a judge in Michigan is considering sanctions against "Kraken" lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood.

Read Neureiter's full decision here.