Lucian Lincoln Wood Jr. (born October 19, 1952) is an American former attorney who made claims about the existence of widespread election fraud during the 2020 US presidential election. He has faced legal sanctions for lawsuits made in furtherance of these claims in the state of Michigan. In July 2023, while facing investigation and possible disciplinary action by the State Bar of Georgia for violating the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct, Wood retired and surrendered his law license rather than face disbarment.
Following his graduation from law school in 1977, Wood worked as a personal injury lawyer, focusing on medical malpractice litigation. He became known as a "celebrity lawyer" specializing in defamation lawsuits. Wood represented Richard Jewell,David Kohn, "60 Minutes II: Falsely Accused," CBS 60 Minutes, February 11, 2009. the security guard falsely accused in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996. Wood's representation of Jewell helped transform him from a personal injury lawyer to a nationally known defamation lawyer. He also represented the family of JonBenét Ramsey and former U.S. representative Gary Condit in defamation suits. He was also hired by Republican political candidate Herman Cain to respond to allegations of sexual harassment.
By 2020, Wood promoted conspiracy theories, both in his capacity as a lawyer and as a political commentator and social media personality. After Joe Biden won that year's presidential election, Wood promoted conspiracy theories on behalf of President Donald Trump, who he claimed actually won the election with 70% of the vote. Wood claimed that a secret cabal of international communists, Chinese intelligence, and Republican officials had contrived to steal the election from Trump. Sometimes in association with Trump's attorney, Sidney Powell, Wood litigated on the president's behalf in many failed lawsuits, which sought to prevent the certification of ballots in the presidential election. In the latter part of 2020, Wood's calls for the imprisonment of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, based on the theory that the two Republican officials worked with the Chinese to help rig the vote for Biden, and the execution of Vice President Mike Pence "by firing squad" attracted considerable attention.
Judge Craig A. Karsnitz of the Superior Court for the State of Delaware revoked Wood's permission to appear pro hac vice before the Court.Page v. Oath, Inc., 2022, at page 7, (Del. Sup. Ct. Jan. 19, 2022), Justia US Law, https://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/supreme-court/2022/69-2021.html (last viewed on May 6, 2023). In August 2021, U.S. District Judge Linda Parker of the Eastern District of Michigan formally sanctioned Wood, Powell, and seven other pro-Trump lawyers for their suit seeking to overturn Trump's election loss.Jan Wolfe, 'Profound abuse': Judge disciplines pro-Trump lawyers over election lawsuit, Reuters (August 25, 2021).Alan Feuer, Judge Orders Sanctions Against Pro-Trump Lawyers Over Election Lawsuit, New York Times (August 25, 2021).
Early life and education Wood was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was raised in Macon, Georgia, from the age of three. He stated that his family struggled financially, with frequent episodes of domestic abuse involving his parents.Krista Reese, "Public figures have tough case to prove," Denver Rocky Mountain News, November 7, 1999,Carlton Fletcher, "L Lin Wood," Albany Herald, September 14, 2008. He has one sister, Diane Wood Stern, born February 1951, deceased in 2023, and a half-sister, Linda Martin Riggins, born in 1946. After a school dance, the then 16-year-old Wood returned home to find his father had beaten his mother to death. L. Lin Wood Sr. pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, a charge reduced from first-degree murder.Kate Julian, "Is Herman Cain's Lawyer the Anti-Gloria Allred?" Slate, November 11, 2011. He served a little over two years in prison. Wood has stated that it was this experience that solidified his earlier decision to become a lawyer.Erik Lundegaard, "L. Lin Wood, Attorney for the Damned, Gets Out Front for Herman Cain," "The Super Lawyers," November 9, 2011.
Wood lived with friends and graduated from Mark Smith High School in Macon, Georgia, in 1970. He attended Mercer University, graduating cum laude in 1974, and Mercer University School of Law, graduating cum laude in 1977. He was admitted to the Georgia Bar. From 1977 to 1996, Wood litigated personal injury cases and medical malpractice cases in the State of Georgia.
Career Lin Wood rose to prominence after representing Richard Jewell, who was falsely accused of perpetrating the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, and he subsequently represented clients in high-profile defamation cases.
Notable clients Richard Jewell Wood's first libel and defamation client was Richard Jewell, the security guard accused in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996. Wood sued a number of media outlets, as well as Jewell's employer. Wood reached monetary settlements from Jewell's employer, CNN, and NBC, while Time published a clarification, but paid no settlement. In 2012, after fifteen years of litigation, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld trial court decisions ruling against Jewell in his libel suit against the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
John and Patsy Ramsey Jewell was quickly followed by other high-profile cases, including John and Patsy Ramsey, the parents of JonBenét Ramsey, whose 1996 murder is still unsolved. Wood represented John and Patsy Ramsey and their son Burke, pursuing defamation claims on their behalf against St. Martin's Press, Time Inc., The Fox News Channel, American Media, Inc., Star, The Globe, Court TV and The New York Post. The lawsuit against Star was settled.
John and Patsy Ramsey were also sued in two separate defamation lawsuits arising from the publication of their book, The Death of Innocence. The suit was brought by two individuals named in the book as having been investigated by Boulder police as suspects in JonBenét's murder. The Ramseys were defended in those lawsuits by Lin Wood and three other Atlanta attorneys, James C. Rawls, Eric P. Schroeder, and S. Derek Bauer. The lawsuits against the Ramseys were dismissed.
In 2016, Wood represented Burke Ramsey, older brother of murder victim JonBenet Ramsey, in a pair of related lawsuits stemming from the CBS network docuseries The Case of JonBenét Ramsey. The first suit was filed against Dr. Werner Spitz, a Michigan-based forensic pathologist, over his assertion in a promotional CBS Detroit radio interview that Burke killed his sister when she was a young child."Burke RaWQmsey Lawsuit: JonBenet Family Lawyer Rips CBS Docuseries . Westword.com, October 10, 2016. The other suit was against CBS and other parties involved in the docuseries, where the same allegations were made. Both lawsuits were settled out of court.
Kyle Rittenhouse Teenager Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with homicide in August 2020, and detained on bail pending his trial. Wood and lawyer John Pierce formed Rittenhouse's initial defense team, although neither were licensed to practice in Wisconsin, where the case was filed. For Rittenhouse's defense, they solicited donations to the "FightBack Foundation", a Texas-based nonprofit they had both founded. The Journal Sentinel quoted several defense lawyers criticizing their involvement and potential conflict of interest over their control of the donated money. In November, Pierce posted Rittenhouse's $2million bail with money donated to FightBack. Wood left the defense team in early December, repurposing FightBack for his election-related litigation. Days later, the prosecutor in the case alleged that FightBack was an "unregulated and opaque ‘slush fund’", and that the donations to the defense should have instead been held in a trust.
Rittenhouse later said that the foundation had fundraised without his family's permission, and that he had fired Wood due to the latter's belief in QAnon and election fraud. Rittenhouse and his mother alleged that Wood had wanted to postpone paying Rittenhouse's bail, because Wood believed that society would break down after the election and that Rittenhouse would be safer in jail. Law&Crime obtained a recording supporting this allegation.
In September 2021, Wood said that FightBack was owed Rittenhouse's $2million bail money. FightBack was eventually awarded $925,000.Kyle Rittenhouse won't get his gun back but will get a share of his $2 million bail money, Journal Sentinel, Bruce Vielmetti, January 28, 2022. Retrieved March 19, 2023.Kyle Rittenhouse Rips Lawyers as They Feud Over His $2M Bail, Daily Beast, Will Sommer, Zachary Petrizzo and Justin Baragona, November 21, 2021. Retrieved March 19, 2023.
Other clients Wood represented former U.S. Congressman Gary Condit, and the alleged victim in the Kobe Bryant case.
In November 2011, Wood was hired by then-presidential candidate Herman Cain, in his efforts to fight off sexual harassment accusations.
Wood was a lead attorney in a whistleblower case against DaVita Healthcare. The suit was settled in 2015 for $450 million plus up to $45 million in fees.
Wood was the lead attorney in Nicholas Sandmann's defamation suits against a number of media companies, including CNN and The Washington Post. Sandmann, a student at Covington Catholic High School, was a party to the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation. In January 2020, Wood settled with CNN, and in July 2020, the suit was settled with The Washington Post.
In December 2019, Wood lost a multi-million defamation case for Vernon Unsworth against Elon Musk who had branded him a "pedo guy". The case was lost because the jury felt that Musk's tweet did not properly identify Unsworth, as he was not mentioned by name.
In 2020 and 2021, Wood represented U.S. representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district, Marjorie Taylor Greene. He also represented Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who aimed firearms towards Black Lives Matter protestors in St. Louis in June 2020.
2020 elections and QAnon
Wood has claimed that President Trump won the 2020 presidential election with 70% of the vote (which would have been the largest popular vote margin in American history), and that a secret cabal of international communists, Chinese intelligence, and Republican officials had conspired to steal the election from Trump. While litigating on Trump's behalf, he asserted to the media and in court that more votes were cast in Michigan during the 2020 presidential election than the entire population of eligible voters in the state, a conclusion he drew from a mistaken comparison of the Michigan vote total with Minnesota population data.
Wood has circulated multiple videos alleging that Cobb County, Georgia shredded evidence of voter fraud in the November 2020 general election, and his Twitter profile includes the hashtag #WWG1WGA (where we go one, we go all), a slogan associated with the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory.
Wood called for would-be Republican voters to "threaten to withhold your votes" and monetary support for Georgia's Republican candidates for the Senate, incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, if they did not demand "investigations" into the election.