Lin Wood, the Georgia lawyer who peddled former President Donald Trump's false election fraud claims, has lost a defamation suit from three former colleagues he painted as "deep state" extortionists, court records and reports show.
Former partners Nicole Wade, Jonathan Grunberg, and Taylor Wilson came out on top in their Georgia federal civil court case in which they accused Wood of leaving them vulnerable to physical threats, according to a new ruling filed Tuesday and a Law360 report.
"Defendant’s Telegram posts claimed Plaintiffs committed— or attempted to commit — criminal extortion when they threatened to sue him if he did not accept their $1.25 million settlement demand,'" federal Judge Michael Brown writes in his order. "This claim was false because 'demand letters' and 'mere threats to sue' 'cannot constitute criminal extortion."
Wood gained acclaim as a defamation lawyer who defended the accused parents of murdered child beauty queen Jon Benét Ramsey and successfully sought vindication of wrongly accused Olympic bombing suspect Richard Jewell.
In early 2020, Wood and his attorney partners were at loggerheads on how to disband their law firm, according to court records. When the lawyers told Wood they would sue to resolve the matter, Wood branded the trio as extortionists, according to the ruling.
For five weeks, Wood dialed up the extortion accusations in text message exchanges on Telegram, according to his former partners.
In one, Taylor Wilson told Wood to cease contact and Wood replied: “F--- you. You are going to jail.”
The order found Wood's characterization untrue.
"Tellingly, [Wood] does not even try to show his accusations were true," the judge writes. "Indeed, he admits [Wade, Grunberg, and Wilson] did not commit 'the crime of extortion.'"
