A federal judge in Colorado has ordered two attorneys to pay nearly $187,000 to cover the defendants’ legal fees after they filed a class action lawsuit challenging the 2020 presidential results.

In a 21-page ruling Monday, Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter accused attorneys Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker of filing a defamatory lawsuit last December without conducting a proper investigation.

“I believe that rather than a legitimate use of the legal system to seek redress for redressable grievances, this lawsuit has been used to manipulate gullible members of the public and foment public unrest,” Neureiter wrote. “To that extent, this lawsuit has been an abuse of the legal system and an interference with the machinery of government.”

Fielder and Walker said they filed the lawsuit on behalf of 160 million American voters, alleging there was a plot to steal the election from Donald Trump and hand it to Joe Biden. The lawsuit, which sought $160 billion in damages, named as defendants Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook, elected officials in four states and the Center for Tech and Civic Life, an election reform advocacy group. 

Neureiter dismissed the lawsuit and has called it “one enormous conspiracy theory.” Fielder and Walker are appealing the ruling.

The judge ordered Fielder and Walker to pay $63,000 to Dominion, $63,000 to CTCL, $50,000 to Facebook (now Meta), $6,000 to the state of Pennsylvania and $5,000 to the state of Michigan.

Neureiter agreed to say his order until the lawyers’ appeal has been ruled on.

In his order, Neureiter wrote that he considered Felder and Walker to be even more culpable because their lawsuit did not originate with a client, but was rather “exclusively a creation of the Plaintiff’s counsel.”

“They are experienced lawyers who should have known better. They need to take responsibility for their misconduct,” Neureiter wrote.

The judge also said that the lawyers made a public appeal for financial donations from “arguably innocent and gullible members of the public in order to supposedly hire experts to support this case.” The attorneys did not hire any experts before or after filing the suit or speak to any purported experts in other election-related cases around the country, Neureiter said. 

Neureiter said he also considered whether the pricey sanctions might “chill zealous advocacy for potentially legitimate claims” but ultimately concluded “that the repetition of defamatory and potentially dangerous unverified allegations is the kind of ‘advocacy’ that needs to be chilled.”

In a statement sent to Spectrum News, Fielder said, "It's unfathomable that the lawyers representing the voters have to pay the attorney fees of the persons and entities that so clearly interfered with the 2020 Presidential election.

“We are not going to stop fighting for the rights of the people to vote in free and fair Presidential elections,” Fielder wrote. “This is the cross to die on.”

Note: This article was updated to include Gary D. Fielder's statement.