The Minnesota Supreme Court has indefinitely suspended attorney Susan Shogren Smith, who authorities say filed legal challenges in the November 2020 election without permission of the plaintiffs.
The suspension from practicing law came Thursday, on the heels of a petition for disciplinary action against Shogren Smith filed by the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility saying that she has conducted professional misconduct.
The Brooklyn Center attorney was given a $10,000 sanction in 2021 after a judge found she “bamboozled” voters into signing on as plaintiffs without their knowledge or permission to file legal challenges against the election of five congressional Democrats.
Calls to Shogren Smith on Friday were not returned.
The petition for disciplinary action noted that a three-judge panel had determined she had committed a “fraud on the court” and gave her an additional $15,000 sanction. The petition claims that Shogren Smith has failed to pay the $25,000, according to court documents.
“Respondent’s misconduct is serious,” the state Supreme Court document said, “and involved not just lack of competence and failure to communicate with clients, but dishonesty to the courts and disregard for the discipline process.”
The court documents said her actions were “not a brief lapse of judgement” but something that occurred for several years.
Shogren Smith is a member of the MN Election Integrity Team, a conservative group that sought to prevent the state from certifying its election results while President Donald Trump and his allies promoted unfounded claims of election fraud.
On Dec. 1, 2020, she filed five complaints in Ramsey County District Court, naming as defendants Secretary of State Steve Simon and the Democratic candidates who won their Congressional races.
Those legal challenges were filed in the names of 14 separate voters, at least four of whom had no idea they were participating.
“Susan Shogren Smith … perpetrated a fraud against this court and, more importantly, perpetrated a fraud against these plaintiffs,” Ramsey County Chief District Judge Leonardo Castro said at the time the first sanction was imposed.
In February of 2021, Republican activist Corinne Braun discovered her name was connected to one of the cases.
“To my horror, I saw that I had sued Steve Simon and Ilhan Omar. It was a surreal moment for me,” she said, likening the discovery to finding her car had been broken into.
Braun testified she had received an anonymous email asking to add her name to a list of disgruntled voters. She filled out the form and signed her name and then forwarded the email to about 5,000 people on her mailing list.
As Shogren Smith explained in court, what Braun had signed was an affidavit that agreed she “will be joining with other voters across Minnesota to contest Minnesota election results.”
Braun, though, said she didn’t understand the implications.
Shogren Smith acknowledged she never spoke with the plaintiffs or informed them of the outcome of the case, even when Braun and two other unwitting plaintiffs were ordered to pay $3,873 to the defendants at the conclusion of the case.
Shogren Smith said at the time, she believed someone else with the MN Election Integrity Team was having those conversations with plaintiffs.
“I absolutely believed that those conversations were happening with these plaintiffs,” she said.
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