Onetime Republican congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik’s defamation suit against Candace Owens was dismissed and she was ordered to pay the Daily Wire star $115,000 in legal fees Wednesday, ending a nearly 18-month-long battle that played out on social media and in court.
Klacik, who first made headlines in 2020 while running for a Baltimore-area House seat with a viral video of her walking through the city’s slums, sued Owens in 2021 after Owens said she committed campaign fraud and money laundering, took drugs, and had worked at a strip club. The $20 million suit, filed in Davidson County, Tennessee, had been working its way toward a hearing on Owens’ motion for dismissal when Klacik did an about-face and stipulated to an agreement ending her case which was then signed off on by the judge and reviewed by The Daily Wire.
Owens leveled her claims on June 22, 2021 in a 44-minute Instagram video, warning conservatives that Klacik was not to be trusted. In a suit initially filed in Baltimore County and later moved to Tennessee, Klacik claimed Owens’ disclosures about her cost her lucrative financial opportunities, including a book deal and a contract with a “nationally recognized vendor,” the Baltimore Sun reported.
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Owens also charged in her Instagram video that a charity established by Klacik, called Potential Me and which claimed to help women find jobs, was a scam and accused her of misusing campaign funds during her 2020 bid for Congress.
The pair clashed again on social media earlier this year when Klacik claimed on Twitter that the judge in the case had ruled in her favor on Owens’ motion to dismiss the case and vowed to continue fighting to clear her name. Owens responded that no such hearing had taken place.
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“This level of lying is actually incomprehensible to me,” Owens wrote on Instagram. “You realize that Kim Klacik is lying now on a judge that is currently presiding over a case. How does that person possess the audacity to disrespect a judge and to do so in public?”
Klacik initially ran in an April 2020 special election to finish the term of longtime Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, who had died in October 2019. She lost to Rep. Kweisi Mfume, but went on to speak at the 2020 Republican National Convention. When Mfume came up for re-election in the 2020 general election, Klacik again unsuccessfully challenged him. She failed to top 30% of the vote in either election.