A federal judge sanctioned nine lawyers for the former US president Donald Trump on Wednesday who filed a lawsuit against the election results of last November in Michigan and that was part of the judicial battle that the Republican leader waged in different states.

The judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, Linda Parker, rated the lawsuit as a “Historical and profound abuse of the judicial process”, according to a 110-page opinion collected by local media.

The decision affected nine lawyers for the former president, including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, which must reimburse the expenses incurred by the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit to respond to the legal action.

In addition, Parker ordered that they receive 12 hours of legal education classes, half of them focused on electoral law.

The decision also opens the door for lawyers to face additional actions in the states where they practice their profession.

For the judge, the case “was never about fraud” and pointed out to Powell and Wood of abusing “well established rules” to file claims marked by “speculation, conjecture and unjustified suspicions.”

“It was about undermining the faith of the people in our democracy and degrading the judicial process to do so,” said the magistrate, who defended the sanctions to “dissuade” those who seek to present “future frivolous lawsuits.”

In the elections last November, the current president, Joe Biden, prevailed over Trump by more than 15,000 votes in Michigan, which was one of the key states in the race for the White House.

Biden was sworn in on January 20 in a heavily armored ceremony after Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol 14 days earlier, in an attempt to stop the joint session of Congress called to confirm the Democratic candidate’s electoral victory. That violent episode left five dead.

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