After filing election suits, pro-Trump lawyer L. Lin Wood is asked to undergo mental health evaluation
L. Lin Wood Jr. in March 2020. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian via Wikimedia Commons.
The State Bar of Georgia has asked lawyer L. Lin Wood Jr., a supporter of former President Donald Trump, to take a mental health examination after he got kicked off a defamation case for “surprising incompetence” in election litigation.
Wood said on the Telegram app that he will decline any request for an exam, report Law360, Reuters, Above the Law and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Georgia bar confirmed to Reuters and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Wood had been asked to take the exam. The state bar is investigating two complaints against Wood, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Georgia bar general counsel Paula Frederick told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Wood is being investigated under a rule that addresses lawyers’ incapacity from mental illness, alcoholism or other substance abuse. The rule authorizes the bar to order medical or psychiatric evaluations and treatment when a lawyer may be impaired or incapacitated, she said.
Wood told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he had not had any alcohol in eight years, and his own doctors have concluded that he is of sound mind. He made the same point in a statement posted on Twitter by another user. Wood has been kicked off the site.
“My mind is sound,” Wood said in the statement. “I have broken no rules. I asked what I had done wrong. I was only told it was about my social media comments. My speech.”
Judge Craig Karsnitz of the Superior Court of Delaware had cited Wood’s tweets when he tossed him from the defamation case, but he said he was basing his decision of his problematic lawsuits.
One of Wood’s tweets had called for the arrest and execution of then-Vice President Mike Pence, Karsnitz said. Law360 cited other tweets, including one that said Hillary Clinton tried to orchestrate the murder of federal judges and another that claimed U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had ties to pedophilia.
Wood’s former law partners filed a suit over the breakup of their firm claiming that Wood began acting erratically in 2019, according to a December story by Law & Crime. The suit alleged that Wood has said he might be “Christ coming back for a second time.”
Wood told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his public statements are “rhetorical hyperbole.”
Karsnitz said Wood was party to an election lawsuit in Georgia that was found to have no basis in law or fact, and he had worked on a Wisconsin case in which the pleadings were “riddled with errors.” Detroit is seeking sanctions against Wood and lawyer Sidney Powell for Michigan election litigation.
In the Georgia litigation, Wood’s verification paragraph said the suit was filed “under plenty of perjury” instead of “under penalty of perjury.” The typo was later corrected.
