Attorney Sidney Powell is seeking to get a federal court to dismiss a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit she is facing from Dominion Voting Systems by claiming “no reasonable person” would conclude the claims she was making “were truly statements of fact.”
The lawsuit came as a result of wild and unproven theories Powell floated about Dominion’s voting machines in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. The Hill noted that Powell argued through her own legal team that the case should be dismissed because they claim it was filed in the wrong jurisdiction and her claims were protected by the First Amendment.
“…no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact,” her legal team said in court documents, later adding, “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process.”
The court filing continued:
All the allegedly defamatory statements attributed to Defendants were made as part of the normal process of litigating issues of momentous significance and immense public interest. The statements were tightly focused on the legal theories they were advancing in litigation and the evidence they had presented, or were going to present, to the courts in support of their claims that the presidential election was stolen, denying millions of Americans their constitutional rights to “one person, one vote” by deliberately mis-counting ballots, diminishing the weight of certain ballots while enhancing the weight of others and otherwise manipulating the vote tabulation process to achieve a pre-determined result.
Lawyers who fought to overturn the 2020 presidential election lost or dropped all but one case out of roughly 60 that were filed. Then-Attorney General William Barr, a favorite in Trump world, had authorized U.S. attorneys to investigate legitimate claims of election fraud after the election and later concluded that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have altered the outcome of the election.
Barr later warned President Donald Trump that those who were advising him that the election had been stolen through fraud were lying to him.
Axios reported:
“These things aren’t panning out,” Barr told the president, standing beside his chief of staff Will Levi. “The stuff that these people are filling your ear with just isn’t true.” Barr explained that if Trump wanted to contest the election results, the president’s internal campaign lawyers would have to do it.
The Justice Department, he continued, had looked at the major fraud allegations that Trump’s lawyers had leveled. “It’s just bulls**t,” Barr told the president. [White House counsel Pat] Cipollone backed up Barr by saying the DOJ was investigating these claims.
Barr also reportedly warned Trump that his legal team was “clownish.” “I’m a pretty informed legal observer and I can’t f***ing figure out what the theory is here,” Barr reportedly said in reference to the claims that Trump’s legal team were making. “It’s just scattershot. It’s all over the hill and gone.”
“Maybe,” Trump responded, according to Axios. “Maybe.”