(Reuters) - A new bid for sanctions against a group of lawyers who sued to overturn the election in Michigan doesn't only focus on their legal arguments. It also targets two of the lawyers over their apparent online embrace of elements of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Those lawyers, Atlanta-based L. Lin Wood and Texas-based Sidney Powell, have expressed "contempt for our courts and our democracy," the city of Detroit wrote in its 56-page motion.

Calling both Wood and Powell "a QAnon disciple," the city also said Wood's Twitter account "reveals a dark strain of paranoia — the same strain which infects this lawsuit."

In mid-December, Wood, a defamation lawyer, wrote on Twitter that all U.S. elections were tainted with fraud, that communists have infiltrated all levels of government, and that "too many judges" are corrupt and traitors, the sanctions brief noted.

The Detroit case, which sought to decertify President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Michigan, was dismissed on Dec. 7. It was one of several failed lawsuits contesting the election brought by Powell, Wood, and others.

Powell, a former federal prosecutor who briefly served on President Donald Trump's post-election legal team, "claims that courts have rejected the election lawsuits, 'because the corruption goes deep and wide.' She re-tweets calls to impose martial law, to 'suspend the December Electoral College vote,' and to 'set up Military Tribunals immediately,'" the sanctions motion said.

Detroit's motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Tuesday, a day after Wood wrote on Twitter that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and other powerful people "are being blackmailed in a horrendous scheme involving rape & murder of children on videotape."

Although Wood has objected to being labeled a QAnon conspiracy theorist, the allegations he has promoted are representative of the belief system, said Travis View, an independent conspiracy theorist researcher and a co-host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

"The basic theory of QAnon is that all powerful people who aren't in line with Trump are being blackmailed because they've committed heinous crimes and this cabal is hanging over them," View said.

Making false accusations against others, even public figures who may not be able to sue for defamation, runs against the conduct expected from lawyers, who are bound to professional rules, ethics experts said.

"We expect lawyers to be people of integrity," said Bruce Green, a legal ethics professor at Fordham University School of Law, adding conduct like Woods' "undermines respect for the legal profession."

But both Green and Tyler Maulsby, a legal ethics partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, noted that persuading a court to discipline Wood for his online comments may not be easy, given they appear to have been made in his personal capacity.

Like many other attorneys, Wood is admitted to practice in multiple jurisdictions, including his home state of Georgia and the U.S. Supreme Court, with different rules and interpretations of those rules.

Green noted, for instance, that Georgia does not "specifically forbid its lawyers from making false statements impugning the integrity of a judge." And while federal courts can launch disciplinary proceedings, Green said the courts typically rely on state disciplinary bodies to initiate any actions.

The city of Detroit asked the court to refer Wood, Powell and other attorneys who signed on to the lawsuit to the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board and to the disciplinary authorities of their home jurisdictions.

It also requested Wood and his colleagues be disbarred from the district court.

Although he declined to comment on the merits of Detroit's motion, Maulsby said it is "far more common for a lawyer to be disciplined for litigation conduct than it is to be disciplined for a public statement."

Reached for comment, Wood said, "Reuters, your organization, is a Communist propaganda tool. I do not engage in interviews with Communists. Get out of our country."

Earlier on Wednesday, he called on Twitter for Vice President Mike Pence and other U.S. leaders to be arrested. (UPDATE: As of Thursday morning, Twitter had suspended Wood's account for violating unspecified rules. Twitter says users can be suspended from its platform for threatening violence, promoting terrorism or extremism, or engaging in harassment.)

Powell did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is King, et al., v. Whitmer, et al., U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, 2:20-cv-13134.