Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.When pro-Trump lawyer L. Lin Wood called for Vice President Mike Pence to be executed for treason on Friday afternoon, it seemed safe to assume things couldn’t get much crazier.But such assumptions would have been wrong. Very wrong.Wood, in fact, was already aware of the rabbit hole he was hurtling down and had to assure his followers that allegations of his “insanity” weren’t true and that everything was “fine.” But rather than spending the weekend laying low, Wood spewed Twitter rants saying that Jeffrey Epstein is still alive and Chief Justice John Roberts and Mitch McConnell are all part of a grand conspiracy to undermine President Donald Trump. The bizarre rants all culminated in the early hours of Monday morning when Wood tweeted out a baseless QAnon-linked conspiracy theory claiming that high-profile individuals are entangled in a blackmail scam involving the “rape and murder of children captured on videotape.”QAnon has long claimed that a cabal of Democratic and Hollywood elites is running a global child sex trafficking ring, but Wood put a new twist on the conspiracy: that a hacking group known as the Lizard Squad had obtained copies of these videos after gaining access to one of the 10 intelligence agencies Wood claims was involved in the scheme.The Lizard Squad is a real group of hackers who came to fame in 2014 when it successfully shut down game networks like Sony’s PlayStation Network and Xbox Live—and tweeted out a bomb threat to a Sony executive's American Airlines flight. The group also shut down North Korea’s internet and threatened to release naked pictures of Taylor Swift. At least four members of the group have been arrested and charged. Wood has produced zero evidence for his claims of the hackers’ involvement, and one former member of the Lizard Squad says they never did anything even remotely close to what’s being described.“I could only assume Wood is ‘schizoposting’, or trolled or hacked,” Vinnie Omari told VICE News. “But I doubt he’s been hacked.”Omari said he’s had no contact with hacking groups in recent years and clarified that he “never ever had any hacked files” that Woods was describing. “Lizard Squad were never, ever involved in the espionage of any country’s government. We never hacked or attacked any government either.”But Wood didn’t stop there. He went on to claim that the Lizard Squad then provided the files to Isaac Kappy, an actor and QAnon supporter who took his own life in 2019. Wood claims Kappy was actually murdered when he tried to give the information to the president—though as with all other claims made during the Twitter rant, he provided no evidence.Wood says he now has the “keys” to the files but will only provide them to Trump, or disgraced national security adviser (and major QAnon supporter) Michael Flynn, or Sidney Powell, another QAnon-supporting lawyer who was previously part of the team of lawyers trying to overturn the election results in states across the country.Wood, Powell, and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, had led a cross-country campaign to get election results thrown out because of spurious claims of voter fraud and that voting machines have been interfered with, all of which have been dismissed by judges.As legal avenues of redress have been shut off, Trump and his allies have increasingly turned to more outrageous tactics, including spreading conspiracy theories.Wood’s previous clients include Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with fatally shooting protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin; and Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who waved firearms at demonstrators outside their St. Louis home.He has also represented Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon-supporting Republican House Representative who attended her first day as a member of Congress on Sunday wearing a “TRUMP WON” mask. But just as Powell was sidelined following an unhinged conference in mid-November when she boosted QAnon claims about electoral fraud conspiracies linked to China and Venezuela, Wood is now being ostracized by his former colleagues.“To be clear: I do not support the statements from Attorney Lin Wood,” Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis tweeted on Friday night, after Wood called for Pence’s execution, adding, “I support the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.” Wood responded to Ellis on Saturday saying that he was fighting for both “7 years before you were born.”
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