Photographer: Al Drago / Bloomberg
Photographer: Al Drago / Bloomberg
Former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell was sued for defamation by the electronic voting machine company that she repeatedly placed at the center of a vast and unfounded electoral conspiracy that she said swapped votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
The complaint filed Friday by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. seeks $ 1.3 billion from Powell, who has filed several unsuccessful lawsuits to overturn the election results. She was dismissed by the Trump campaign not long after a news conference on November 19 in which she claimed that agents from Iran and China had infiltrated Dominion’s voting machines to help Biden and that the software had links to the Venezuelan dictator. Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013.
“Powell’s violent accusations are proven to be false,” the Toronto and Denver-based company said in the complaint. “Acting in conjunction with allies and the media who were determined to promote a false and preconceived narrative about the 2020 elections, Powell launched a viral misinformation campaign about Dominion that reached millions and caused massive damage to Dominion.”
The case may be the first of several lawsuits against individuals and the media accused of destroying the company’s reputation by repeating or publicizing conspiracy theories to explain the failure of President Donald Trump’s candidacy for a second term. Trump’s top electoral lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Fox News and the White House itself were among those who received letters from Dominion’s lawyers in December.
Powell did not immediately respond to a message asking for comment.
Also cited as a defendant in the lawsuit is Defending the Republic Inc., based in Dallas. Powell has a website, defendingtherepublic.org, on which he continues to solicit donations for his work “to defend and protect the integrity of elections in the U.S. “
Powell said Dominion carried out the alleged fraud with the help of thousands of corrupt Democratic election workers. These claims were repeated in several lawsuits that Powell opened regardless of the campaign challenging election results in battle states. She described her dispute as “liberating the Kraken”, a reference to a mythical sea monster released by Zeus in the 1981 fantasy film “Clash of the Titans”. The judges quickly rejected their allegations for lack of reliable evidence.
Powell also frequently discussed his theories about Dominion during television interviews with conservative media outlets, promising large amounts of hard evidence that never materialized.
(Updates with details of the complaint.)