Parker’s order also makes it clear that lawyers don’t have a First Amendment right to say whatever they want in court in the service of a political objective. To the contrary; the privilege of being a lawyer comes with a duty of candor and honesty. While the First Amendment protects public statements and even lies (which politicians make all the time) out of court, lawyers don’t have the right to make wholly unsubstantiated claims — as mythical as the Kraken itself — like this fanciful fable: “at some time after the 2016 election, software was installed that programmed tabulating machines ‘to shift a percentage of the absentee ballot votes from Trump to Biden.’”

Yet while Parker’s decision is a tour de force of rigorous fact-based analysis and a much-needed rejoinder to the loopy unreality of the Kraken universe, it also reveals the limits of the system. It is notable that Parker dealt only with the lawyers’ egregious misconduct on motion by the defendants, which is part of the reason the sanctions were so long in coming — and that they came only after so much damage was done. In the future, courts should be more proactive in policing rogue lawyers, not wait for others to complain before they take steps to stop conduct inconsistent with the rule of law…

This means that it is now up to the state bars with authority over these lawyers — Texas for Powell, Georgia for Wood — to ensure that they don’t have the ability to do this again. Rudy Giuliani, Powell’s “elite strike force” colleague, has already had his license suspended in New York. Based on Parker’s order, there are at least four grounds for such discipline against the Michigan lawyers.