“A Minnesota attorney who filed legal challenges to the November election of five congressional Democrats was given a $10,000 sanction Friday after a judge found she ‘bamboozled’ voters into signing on as plaintiffs without their knowledge or permission. ‘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 from the bench. 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” reports the Twin Cities Pioneer Press.

“On Dec. 1, 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. Castro ruled in the defendants’ favor on Dec. 18 and closed the cases. But it wasn’t until February when Republican activist Corinne Braun discovered her name was connected to one of the cases. She testified Friday that on a whim, she searched her own name in the state’s online court records system and was stunned to see the result. ‘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.”