Donald Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell has claimed that ‘no reasonable person’ would believe that her allegations about voting fraud were ‘statements of fact’, as she sought to dismiss a $1.3 billion defamation suit against her.
Powell, 65, was sued by Dominion Voting Systems in January for her assertions that the election was stolen from Trump, via rigged ballot machinery provided by the company.
She and Rudy Giuliani, another of the former president’s lawyers, claimed that the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez had concocted a plot that would enable Dominion’s machines to switch votes, and that this system was used against Trump.
On Monday Powell’s attorneys attempted to get the charges against her dismissed by a judge in Washington DC.
Her attorneys argued that ‘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.’
Sidney Powell has been sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion in defamation
The voting machine company are suing for reputational damages which they say Powell caused
A sample ballot is shown using the Dominion Voting system in Georgia
Her team insisted in their 54-page motion that the claims were protected under the First Amendment.
‘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 motion reads.
Lawrence J. Joseph, Powell’s lawyer, also argued that the case should be dismissed because it was filed in the wrong jurisdiction.
And they said that the phrasing should be accepted as ‘the language of the political arena’.
When Powell repeated her conspiracy theories on Fox News, Fox Business News and The Epoch Times, her lawyers claim, she was just informing the public about the ideas that she was advancing in her lawsuits.
‘Reasonable people understand that the ‘language of the political arena, like the language used in labor disputes … is often vituperative, abusive and inexact,” her motion to dismiss argues.
‘It is likewise a ‘well recognized principle that political statements are inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.’
‘It would make no sense, and serve no public purpose, to give immunity for statements made during the course of litigation – which are themselves public – but burden lawyers with the threat of billion-dollar defamation verdicts when the same allegations are made at press conferences and news releases announcing and discussing the case.’
Powell nicknamed her voter fraud lawsuits the ‘Kraken’, but the four suits all failed
Donald Trump continues to claim that the election was ‘stolen’ from him, without proof
Powell nicknamed her lawsuits the ‘Kraken’, after the mythical, octopus-like creature depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster Clash of the Titans.
In the movie, the monster was easily slain.
The four lawsuits filed by Powell and her co-counsel Lin Wood, alleging a giant plot between voting companies and foreign powers to interfere with the election, met with the same fate.
Dominion has not responded to her motion to dismiss.
In January, John Poulos, the CEO of Dominion, said that Powell bore some of the blame for stirring up the January 6 Capitol riots – which showed how dangerous her rhetoric was.
‘The recent attacks on the democratic process are not singular or isolated events,’ he said.
‘They are the result of a deliberate and malicious campaign of lies over many months.
‘Sidney Powell and others created and disseminated these lies, assisted and amplified by a range of media platforms.’
Dominion has also filed $1.3 billion defamation lawsuits against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and against Giuliani, arguing that they, like Powell, damaged its reputation with baseless claims against its voting machines.
