Lawyer Lin Wood, who filed several frivolous lawsuits on behalf of former Pres. Trump, was ordered to seek a mental exam. The Georgia Bar Association ordered him to sit for the exam. Mr. Wood then filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn that order. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected Mr. Wood’s appeal.
Mr. Wood had argued that the Georgia Bar Associations order was due to his political activities as reflected in his tweets saying Mike Pence should be executed. In other tweets, the lawyer also said Hillary Clinton had tried to arrange the assassination of federal judges, and that Chief Justice John Roberts had ties to pedophilia. But, the Bar said its investigation of Lawyer Wood looked at 1700 pages of evidence. This evidence showed that Mr. Wood:
- engaged in erratic behavior, including incoherent phone calls, voice messages and texts
- physically attacked one former colleague in an elevator
- attacked another colleague who came to his house checking on his welfare
- offered to fight his former colleagues to the death in one phone call
The lower Georgia court had dismissed Wood’s lawsuit based on the Younger abstention doctrine. That doctrine provides that a federal court may not interfere with state court proceedings if those state court proceedings allow opportunity to address the constitutional questions. The Eleventh Circuit noted that the Georgia Bar’s disciplinary proceedings were still ongoing. See ABA Bar Journal report here.