- Dominion Voting Systems has filed a defamation suit against Trump’s attorney Sidney Powell, seeking $ 1.3 billion in damages.
- Powell, a former lawyer for President Donald Trump’s campaign, has argued a conspiracy theory that the election technology company falsified the results of the 2020 presidential election.
- The lawsuits outline a number of lies Powell makes in her election lawsuits and public statements about the election and Dominion’s non-existent involvement in the expiration of the results.
- It was all the more damaging to her conspiracy theories because it was reinforced by Trump and right-wing media.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation suit against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell on Friday, demanding $ 1.3 billion in damages.
Powell has for months argued a false conspiracy theory alleging that Dominion’s election technology helped falsify the results of the 2020 presidential election to ‘switch’ votes from President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.
Her complex theory claims that Dominion was secretly engaged in a rival electoral technology, Smartmatic, and had ties to the regime of current Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“Dominion was not created in Venezuela to establish elections for a now-deceased Venezuelan dictator, but was established in Toronto with the aim of creating a complete paper system with audit that will enable people with disabilities to be independently verifiable. ballot papers, ballot papers, ”the Dominion lawsuit alleges.
Smartmatic also said it would litigate against conspiracy theorists and media organizations that gave them a platform.
Powell was one of the faces of the Trump campaign’s legal team in November, but Trump kicked her off the team after she let her conspiracy theory fly at a press conference with attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis. Giuliani and Ellis remained in the legal team of the campaign, both continued to spread falsehoods about the election and Giuliani spread many of the same theories as Powell.
Despite being purged of Trump’s ‘Elite Strike Force’, Powell uses her false theories as the premise of four federal lawsuits seeking to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. Everyone failed and now led to her motions being rejected.
Dominion’s 124-page defamation lawsuit – which contains nearly 2,000 pages of exhibits – filed in federal court in Washington, DC, outlines how Powell repeatedly spread lies about the company, and the evidence of election certification and security officials and courts that found her flew claim merit.
It says it reached the $ 1.3 billion figure by adding up the value of the risk contracts because of the disinformation, the penalty for her claim and the recovery of the costs of the lawsuit against her.
“These false allegations have caused catastrophic damage to this company. They have branded Dominion, which makes them a voting company, a huge fraud,” Tom Claire, the lawyer representing Dominion, told a Zoom press conference on Friday. “Those allegations caused a media storm that promoted the same false allegations to a global audience. They made the company radioactive and destroyed the value of this thriving business and jeopardized Dominion’s multi-year contracts.”
A lie spread by a right-wing media ecosystem
The lawsuit outlines how Powell used the right-wing media ecosystem to spread the theory. It says Powell’s lies ‘in conjunction with like-minded allies and media diversions’ have led to threats against Dominion employees and election officials.
It also points out that Trump tweeted videos of Powell “tweeting her claims” to his more than 88 million followers, which immediately and irreparably damaged Dominion’s reputation and business to a global audience and endangered the lives of Dominion employees set.”
Claire said Friday that this case against Powell will be the first in a series and that the company is still considering suing Trump himself.
He told Insider that he expects to sue other parties in parallel with Powell, rather than wait until the case against her is settled.
US President Donald Trump looks at wrestler Dan Gable at the White House Oval Office in Washington, DC on December 7, 2020, during a ceremony on the presidential medal of freedom.
Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images
In December, Claire sent document custody letters to Giuliani as well as right-wing media organizations, including Fox News, Newsmax and One America News, and earlier told Insider that the company also weighed libel cases against them.
The lawsuit also outlines how Powell raised money during her media tour through her conspiracy theory through a corporate vehicle called ‘Defending the Republic, Inc.’, which was also named as a party to the lawsuit.
“Powell deliberately made them in the course of her business as a media person, writer and lawyer because she was able to derive direct and indirect financial benefits from the fact that she made the false statements – and indeed could also draw,” the lawsuit said.
Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Real malice
To succeed in a defamation lawsuit, plaintiffs like Dominion must show that defendants like Powell acted with ‘real malice,’ rather than sincerely believing their falsehoods.
To remove this obstacle, Claire said Friday, the lawsuit points to the fact that Powell ignored Dominion’s demands for withdrawal.
“Heard they wrote me too! Did not see it, but did not withdraw anything. We have # evidence. They are # fraudsters!” Powell tweeted on Dec. 20 in response to a tweet from Lin Wood, a Trump electorate and associate lawyer and conspiracy theorist who was banned on Twitter after falsely claiming that Supreme Court Justice John Roberts was involved in a pedophile ring and appealed to Vice President Mike Pence. to be executed.
“It’s hard to imagine better evidence of them disregarding the truth,” Claire said.
Attorney Sidney Powell looks at Attorney L. Lin Wood as he speaks at a press conference on December 2, 2020, about election results in Georgia.
Elijah Nouvelage / Reuters
Claire also said Powell continued to propel her conspiracy theory, even when she was contradicted by hard evidence, falsified court documents and misrepresented the qualifications of her sources.
“She went on to make the same discredited statements over and over and over again in the face of all the hard evidence,” Claire said. “She withheld and misrepresented who her sources actually were, as well as their qualifications. She relied on sources with a record of spreading false statements and spreading conspiracy theories.”
The lawsuit points to an exhibit Powell filed in her federal case in Georgia. She said Dominion was not up to date in the state. In fact, the exhibit simply cut off the certification date, which was recent.
On the left, an exhibit that Sidney Powell submitted with approval submitted with approval. On the right is the authentic certificate of approval for election technology.
Lawsuit
Jan Jacobowitz, a former law professor at the University of Miami and expert in legal ethics, earlier told Insider that Powell could be denied or face other court sentences if she was found to have falsified documents in her lawsuits. . The city of Detroit, following the failure of Powell’s lawsuit in Michigan, has already referred her for denial.
Dominion’s lawsuit outlines the dubious sources Powell cites in her lawsuits. The one is ‘Spider’ – Powell sometimes spelled the name ‘Spyder’ – who claims to be a ‘military intelligence expert’. Powell withdrew her identity from the case, but incorrectly included her real name in the metadata. The Washington Post spoke to Merritt and found that he had substantially proposed his qualifications.
Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell at a Trump campaign press conference.
AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin
Another source, who described Powell as a “Venezuelan military officer”, was identified by the Associated Press as Leamsy Villafaña José Salazar. Dominion’s lawsuit describes Salazar’s allegations as false on their face.
‘If Salazar is now a pure-hearted whistleblower with the best interests of American democracy, why did he wait more than five years after arriving in the United States – until after Trump lost the presidential election – to tell anyone that the US election hampered by use of decades-old Venezuelan voice-scrolling software[?]’the lawsuit says.
Dominion says other celebrities that Powell relied on in her lawsuit are ‘conspiracy theorists, fellow artists and other face-unreliable sources as experts’. One lied about their military career. Allegedly, another lied about being a doctor and using charity money for personal gain. Another alleges fraud with reference to a province that does not exist. And one argued anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claiming that George Soros gave rise to Nazi Germany in the 1930s (Soros is Jewish and was born in 1930).
“Lies have been told about government election officials, election workers and Dominion Voting Systems,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said Friday. Those lies have consequences. They have diminished the credibility of US elections. They subjected officials and Dominion employees to harassment and death threats. And they have severely damaged the reputation of our company. ‘