- Sidney Powell decided to reject Dominion’s $ 1.3 billion defamation suit against her.
- His lawyers say no reasonable person would take his allegations about Dominion seriously.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
Lawyers representing attorney Sidney Powell filed a motion on Monday to reject a $ 1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, arguing their conspiracy theories about the electoral technology company having ties to Venezuela. and secretly defrauding the 2020 presidential election should not have been taken literally.
“Until [assuming] that each of the statements alleged in the Complaint it could whether proven true or false, no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were actually statements of fact, “Powell’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.
Dominion filed its lawsuit against Powell in January, alleging that the lawyer defamed the company when it falsely claimed that the company secretly exchanged the votes of then President Donald Trump for current President Joe Biden.
Powell, an appeals court lawyer who also represented Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, became a national figure in November after Trump’s electoral defeat. She denied the reality that he lost the election and falsely claimed that electoral technology companies like Dominion and Smartmatic, which also sued Powell, forged votes.
She was hired and fired by Trump’s legal team before filing four lawsuits on her own to overturn election results. His lawsuits, full of typos and bizarre allegations, failed in court.
Attorneys Lawrence J. Joseph, Howard Kleinhendler and Jesse R. Binnall filed their response to the Dominion lawsuit on behalf of Powell and Defending the Republic, a fundraising vehicle she set up while promoting her failed lawsuits.
They argued that Powell’s statements should be taken in the context of the highly charged election, although Trump had already lost the election at that point, and that any “reasonable person” would understand that she was not making factual claims, even if she had made her claims. in lawsuits, as well as appearances in the media.
“Notably, one of the Complaint’s focal points is the press conference held by Sidney Powell and others on November 19, 2020 at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Washington, DC,” wrote the lawyers. “Obviously, any press conference coming from the Republican National Committee is essentially political.”
Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell.
AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin
Powell’s lawyers say that the fact that Dominion refers to Powell’s claims as strange indicates that they should never have been taken seriously in the first place.
“In fact, the Claimants themselves characterize the statements in question as ‘wild accusations’ and ‘bizarre allegations’. They are repeatedly labeled ‘inherently improbable’ and even impossible, “” Powell’s lawyers wrote. “Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support the Defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as facts, but they would see them only as claims awaiting trial by the courts through the adversary process. “
Powell doubled down on his conspiracy theories more than a month after the election results were resolved. After Dominion sent her document retention letters warning of a lawsuit, she called the company “masters of fraud” on Twitter.
Powell vehemently refused to retract his claims about the company and did not respond to Insider’s repeated requests for comment.
The new order does not address many of the points in Dominion’s original process, including that Powell submitted modified documentation on the company’s certificate to provide election technology in Georgia. Legal ethics experts said Insider Powell could face sanctions if it modified judicial displays.
A litany of legal challenges awaits Powell after his failed electoral processes. In addition to the defamation lawsuits by Dominion and Smartmatic, authorities in Michigan are trying to remove her and the lawyers who worked with her.