Sidney Powell’s defense in defamation suit could put her in legal jeopardy
It could also put her in real legal jeopardy as she fights the defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems — a manufacturer that provides election equipment used by more than 40% of US voters — as well as a motion for sanctions in Michigan as a part of a case she brought there alleging election fraud.
First Amendment expert Ted Boutrous of Gibson Dunn said that the legal implications for Powell could be dire.
“The First Amendment provides strong protections for statements of opinion,” he said. “But what Dominion is pointing to is the fact that Ms. Powell was declaring that she had evidence of this fraud and this election malfeasance and she was declaring that as a matter of fact.”
“The First Amendment doesn’t protect knowingly false statements of fact,” Boutrous added.
“It’s official, Sidney Powell is a massive fraud — that’s according to Sidney Powell herself,” CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said about the new filing.
Powell responded to reports in a statement issued Wednesday. “The #FakeNews is lying to everyone about our filing” in the Dominion case.
Powell attorney Howard Kleinhendler issued a further comment about the Dominion lawsuit. “First, let me be clear: any suggestion that ‘no reasonable person’ would believe Ms. Powell or her comments on the election is false,” he said. “The language these reports referred to is a legal standard adopted by the courts to determine whether statements qualify as opinions which are exempt from defamation liability.”
Dominion detailed comments that Powell made at press conferences, a political rally and media appearances after she claimed that Dominion had rigged the election.
“As a result of the defamatory falsehoods peddled by Powell — in concert with like- minded allies and media outlets who were determined to promote a false preconceived narrative — Dominion’s founder, Dominion’s employees, Georgia’s governor, and Georgia’s secretary of state have been harassed and have received death threats, and Dominion has suffered enormous harm,” the lawyers wrote in the case filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
“Dominion brings this action to set the record straight, to vindicate the company’s rights under civil law, to recover compensatory damages, to seek a narrowly tailored injunction, and to stand up for itself and its employees,” the company said.
In response, Powell’s lawyers pointed to statements she made at a Georgia political rally as an example of hyperbole.
“She claimed that she had evidence that the election result was the ‘greatest crime of the century if not the life of the world,'” they wrote.
“It is a likewise well recognized principle that political statements are inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole,” the filing states. And then they added this statement: “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 judge overseeing Dominion’s defamation suit in Washington is still looking at early questions about whether the lawsuit should continue in his court and whether Powell can be sued and isn’t yet considering the legitimacy of Dominion’s allegations that Powell knowingly spread falsehoods about the company.
The initial court filing statement stunned David Fink, a lawyer who is asking a federal judge in Michigan on behalf of the city of Detroit to sanction Powell and others for not telling the truth.
“When I read the brief in that case I was…
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