Pro-Trump Election Conspiracist Lin Wood Under Investigation For Illegal Voting
The Georgia secretary of state's office is investigating allegations that Lin Wood, a high-profile pro-Trump attorney who launched fruitless challenges to election results and pushed baseless conspiracies of fraud, may have illegally voted in the November general election. Wood played a crucial role in President Trump's efforts to undermine the election.
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office confirmed the investigation was opened after a reporter with WSB-TV in Atlanta posted an email from Wood where the attorney said he had been living in South Carolina for several months.
On the social media site Telegram, Wood wrote Monday that he was leaving Georgia and changed his residency to South Carolina after he said Georgia "falsely accused me and shunned me."
After news of the investigation broke, Wood wrote that he only became a South Carolina resident as of Feb. 1 and called Raffensperger a "loser" who "is going to jail."
In the weeks after the November presidential election, Wood was one of the most prominent voices spreading lies and misinformation about the nation's vote-counting process, filing several failed lawsuits seeking to toss out millions of votes and block Joe Biden from becoming the next president.
In one suit, the defamation lawyer who gained notoriety for representing accused Olympic bomber Richard Jewell accidentally wrote his lawsuit was filed under "plenty" of perjury instead of "penalty," and attempted to push debunked claims of fraud all the way to the Supreme Court.
Outside the courtroom, Wood is most known for his inflammatory social media posts and staunch support of the QAnon conspiracy theory. He was suspended (and later banned) from Twitter after posting "the time has come Patriots" and it was "time to fight for our freedom" on Jan. 6, hours before a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Wood also had posts deleted from Parler that called for the assassination of former Vice President Mike Pence, and frequently shared QAnon conspiracies and spread falsehoods about the November election.
Now, his posts on Telegram are under scrutiny as officials seek to determine if one of the loudest voices alleging election fraud committed a crime himself. Georgia state code 21-2-217 (a) (5) says that if a person moves to another state "with the intention of remaining there an indefinite time and making such state the person's place of residence" then they are no longer considered eligible to vote in Georgia.
State investigators will now determine if Wood lived in South Carolina or in Georgia when he voted early in person for the November presidential election.But the saga of the election has taken a larger toll on Wood's professional relationships.
In recent days, his alma mater Mercer University in Macon, Ga., explored removing Wood's name from a courtroom dedication and the Georgia State Bar asked him to take a mental health evaluation to continue practicing law in the state. A judge in Delaware booted Wood off a case citing a "toxic stew of mendacity" and lawyers for MSNBC host Joy Reid have asked a New York judge to remove Wood from that case. [Copyright 2021 NPR]
