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, 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. 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.
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. 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. At the end of December 2020, Wood launched a series of allegations on
Twitter: he implied that Chief Justice
John Roberts was involved in the death of Justice
Antonin Scalia, suggested that Roberts was a child trafficker, declared that the deceased
Jeffrey Epstein was actually alive, and that Epstein could reveal the truth about Roberts. At the start of January 2021, Wood declared his belief that Vice President
Mike Pence would "face execution by firing squad" for "treason", after Pence's lawyers fought a lawsuit which was aimed at making Pence refuse to count electoral votes for Joe Biden. Wood also called for Roberts and Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell to be arrested for
treason. Wood was criticized for these comments, and responded by insisting that he is not insane. In early January 2021, Wood continued promoting conspiracy theories linked to QAnon, alleging that Roberts had committed child rape and child murder, and was being blackmailed for this by ten intelligence agencies of various nations. Wood said that hacker group
Lizard Squad obtained the information; a former member of Lizard Squad denied this. Wood also claimed that QAnon supporter
Isaac Kappy was murdered for attempting to transmit the information to then-President Trump (Kappy committed suicide in 2019). On January 11, 2021,
Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig A. Karsnitz gave Wood's social media postings in his published reasons for an order revoking Wood's right to appear before the court. On January 6, 2021, before the
College vote count, through a Twitter Post, Wood called for the immediate resignation of Vice President
Mike Pence, Deputy Attorney general
Rod Rosenstein and Supreme Court Justice
John Roberts and asserted that charges should be brought against Pence and Rosenstein. His Twitter account was permanently suspended after the
January 2021 storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. After the attack on the Capitol, Wood claimed that members of the pro-Trump mob were
antifa activists in disguise and that Vice President Mike Pence was a "child molester". Parler removed several of Wood's posts due to violations of their community guidelines, including the one calling for Pence's execution.
Georgia On November 13, 2020, after Joe Biden defeated Trump in the
presidential election in Georgia, Wood filed a lawsuit in the
federal district court in Atlanta, naming himself as plaintiff. Wood claimed that Georgia's procedures for handling absentee ballots had been unconstitutional since March 2020 and sought to block certification of the state's election results. Wood later also claimed that Georgia's recounting of votes was flawed. Wood's lawsuit failed on November 19, 2020, when U.S. District Judge
Steven Grimberg, who was appointed by Trump, found "no basis in fact or in law" to stop Georgia's certification of its election results at such a late stage, as this would "breed confusion and potential disenfranchisement". The judge ruled that Wood had no
legal standing to bring the lawsuit, and had brought the case too late. Wood failed to show that he had been harmed, while his proposal would "harm the public in countless ways". A three-judge panel on the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court's dismissal of the suit on December 5, 2020. The court found that Wood had failed "to allege a particularized
injury" and his request to delay certification was in any case
moot because Georgia had by then already certified its election results. On December 18, 2020, Wood filed another lawsuit in the
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Wood sought an emergency injunction to halt the
Senatorial runoff election for the two United States Senate seats from Georgia. The complaint contained a remarkable typographical error in that it was verified by Wood "under plenty of perjury" rather than "under penalty of perjury". U.S. District Judge
Timothy Batten denied Wood's request for a temporary restraining order on December 28, 2020, stating that Wood lacked standing to file the lawsuit, that his claims of potential voter fraud were "too speculative," and that overall the lawsuit had "no basis in fact or law." and that granting their requests would "greatly harm the public interest." In January 2021, the City of Detroit filed a motion to call for sanctions against Wood, Powell, and other lawyers who filed the unsuccessful case challenging Michigan's election results. In a July 2021 court hearing, Wood argued that he could not be sanctioned. He said his name was "placed on" the complaint, but he "had no involvement whatsoever with it". Wood said that he had "generally indicated" to Powell that if she required a "trial lawyer", he would "certainly be willing or available to help her", while Powell said she believed that she added Wood to the case with him knowing about it, but also said that may have been a "misunderstanding". The court determined that the pro-Trump attorneys had participated in "a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process," namely filing a baseless, frivolous lawsuit in order to undermine public confidence in the democratic process.
Delaware Based on his actions in election-related cases, Judge Karsnitz ordered Wood to show cause why his right to appear
pro hac vice in a Delaware Superior Court defamation case where he was representing
Carter Page; Wood's right to appear was revoked on January 11, 2021, that Wood's actions in the Georgia and Wisconsin election-related lawsuits "exhibited a toxic stew of mendacity, prevarication, and surprising incompetence." that one of two cases filed by Mr. Wood as a plaintiff was "textbook frivolous litigation." Disregarding both the fact that Wood never signed the Wisconsin pleadings and that Wood was listed as “Counsel of Notice,” Judge Karsnitz nonetheless concluded that Wood was responsible for the Wisconsin case filed by Sidney Powell, the pleadings of which Judge Karsnitz further opined "would not survive a law school civil procedure class." On January 19, 2022, the Delaware Supreme Court vacated Karsnitz’s decision to revoke Wood's
pro hac vice to practice in Delaware, permitting Wood to withdraw voluntarily. The Court found the lower court's “insinuation” that Wood was even partially responsible for
January 6 without any supporting evidence or opportunity for Wood to respond was “indicative of an unfair process” was beyond the scope of the Rule to Show Cause. The Delaware Supreme Court likewise found the [lower] court's opinion suggested its intent to smear Wood's reputation. finding that the revocation “was an abuse of discretion.”
Law firm break-up In August 2020, Wood was sued by three of his former law firm colleagues, in a lawsuit which alleged that Wood owed them money because he breached a contract regarding a settlement between them when the trio tried to leave his law firm. The lawsuit also alleged that Wood had assaulted one of them, and that between late 2019 and February 2020, Wood sent "abusive" and "incoherent" communications and referred to himself as the "Almighty". Wood responded that the lawsuit was a "shakedown" for money, claiming that the communications were "irrelevant" and from "a difficult time in my personal life arising primarily from my family's reaction to my faith in Jesus Christ." On September 9, 2024 Judge
Scott F. McAfee ruled that Wood violated his June 5, 2023 warning of additional sanctions for violating the original non-disparagement order and was ordered to pay the Plaintiffs $105,000 for seven separate incidents, within fourteen days. He warned Wood that any future violation of the nondisparagement order would elicit a $25,000 fine and could strip him of his defenses in the ongoing case. On May 30, 2025, the total judgment was revised from a jury verdict of $11,445,376.99 to $9,661,177.00, with interest accruing daily. The Judge ruled that plaintiffs must elect either the remedy of breach of contract or
fraud; that
“separate transactions” were not established to justify two separate awards. Plaintiffs elected fraud. On September 10, 2025, Wood filed a
Notice of Appeal, but no
supersedeus bond was posted. On November 5, 2025, the presiding judge ordered defendant Wood to obtain a $1 million supersedeus bond within 30 days or be subject to property seizure. ====Federal
defamation trial==== commenced August 7, 2024. Prior to trial,
partial summary judgment was awarded to plaintiffs, Wade, Grunberg, and Wilson. On August 15, a jury decided in favor of the three former colleagues, awarding them $3.75 million. On August 16, 2024, phase II, the jury returned a verdict for attorney’s fees of $750,000, although the time sheets accrued $610,834.46. Wood told the judge he would appeal the decisions.
State Bar investigation In 2021, the
Georgia State Bar commenced an investigation to determine whether Wood violated the state's rules of professional conduct in his election-related litigation. As part of that investigation the state bar sought a mental health examination of Wood, which Wood unsuccessfully attempted to block. Wood was later, separately referred to the Georgia State Bar for possible discipline over the Michigan election litigation in which he participated, a lawsuit the Michigan judge found was filed "in bad faith and for improper purpose."
Surrender of law license On July 4, 2023, facing sanctions up to and including possible disbarment due to his election litigation, Wood requested to change his status from "active" to "retired," and surrendered his license to practice law in Georgia. In return, the State Bar agreed to drop all disciplinary proceedings against Wood. According to letters Wood posted to his Telegram account, his request to retire was "unqualified, irrevocable and permanent", and he can never practice law in the United States again. State Bar officials said that Wood's retirement had "achieved the goals of disciplinary action, including protecting the public and the integrity of the judicial system and the legal profession." == Views ==