Sidney Powell argues in new court filing that no reasonable people would believe her election fraud claims
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Right-wing lawyer Sidney Powell is claiming in a new court filing that reasonable people wouldn't have believed as fact her assertions of fraud after the 2020 presidential election.
© Drew Angerer/Getty Images WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 19: Attorney Sidney Powell speaks to the press about various lawsuits related to the 2020 election, inside the Republican National Committee headquarters on November 19, 2020 in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump, who has not been seen publicly in several days, continues to push baseless claims about election fraud and dispute the results of the 2020 United States presidential election. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The election infrastructure company Dominion Voting Systems sued Powell for defamation after she pushed lawsuits and made appearances in conservative media on behalf of then-President Donald Trump to sow doubt about the 2020 election results. Dominion claims that Powell knew her election fraud accusations were false and hurtful to the company.
In a new court filing, Powell's attorneys write that she was sharing her "opinion" and that the public could reach "their own conclusions" about whether votes were changed by election machines.
"Given the highly charged and political context of the statements, it is clear that Powell was describing the facts on which she based the lawsuits she filed in support of President Trump," Powell's defense lawyers wrote in a court filing on Monday.
"Indeed, Plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements at issue as 'wild accusations' and 'outlandish claims.' They are repeatedly labelled 'inherently improbable' and even 'impossible.' Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support Defendants' position 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."
Election authorities and Dominion have resoundingly called Trump's loss in the election accurate and untainted by any possible major security risks. Trump's lawyers and his allies quickly lost or dropped all but one minor case out of nearly 60 following the election, as the then-President sought to overturn Joe Biden's win in multiple key states.
Though the Trump campaign had sought to distance itself from Powell after she held a conspiracy-filled news conference with his other attorneys, Trump had told people he liked Powell's arguments and wanted to see more of her on television.
In one chaotic Oval Office meeting in December, Trump said he had considered naming her as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud allegations
Besides Powell, the meeting included her client, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter previously told CNN, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points, as some of Trump's aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn's more outrageous suggestions to overturn the election.
The following day, Trump's campaign legal team sent a memo to dozens of staffers instructing them to preserve all documents related to Dominion Voting Systems and Powell, in anticipation of litigation by the company.
The lawsuit -- filed in January -- outlined Powell's TV appearances and online posts in extraordinary detail, including when she repeated her unfounded beliefs that Dominion was linked to communist Venezuela and Georgia officials were in on election fraud.
"Emboldened by Trump's endorsement of her false accusations, which launched her into political superstardom, Powell's defamatory media campaign continued and intensified" with her media appearances, Dominion alleged in its lawsuit.
A former federal prosecutor based in Texas, Powell rose to prominence through her criticism of the Robert Mueller investigation and her promotion of right-wing conspiracy theories about a range of topics on social media.
Powell also claims in court that her statements about the 2020 election were a "matter of public concern" about a publicly known company, Dominion, and thus protected speech.
Her attorneys also claim she had a right to make accusations because she was acting as an attorney for the Trump campaign, even during her right-wing TV appearances. As a result, Powell is asking a judge in Washington, DC, to dismiss the case, or to allow it to be moved to the federal court in Texas.
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One of the primary players in perpetrating "The big lie" has decided that her only way out is to say she was lying about it....? I wonder when Rudy will pull the same stunt.
Pass the popcorn......
for the record, anything that I may state here on NT concerning trumpsters and what should become of them is simply politically charged rhetoric, thus protected free speech on my part... /s
I know where you want to go, but death wishing is a big no..no.. here at Perrie's Place. Keep your powder dry....
Besides, it's whack-a-mole season and Rudy ought to be popping up shortly.
rudy's product expiration date lapsed years ago.
rudy's product expiration date lapsed years ago.
When has that ever kept him from popping up and making a fool of himself....!
Am I wrong, or does admitting it was all a lie just worsen her case? If she'd believed it to be a fact, she could have argued "good faith", but if she is admitting she made it up, or knowingly kept repeating a lie as fact.
I'll leave it to our legal minds here to weigh the impact of her statements vs her exposure Ozz........
Indeed, literally everything she did and everything she has said since only furthers Dominion’s case.
Sidney Powell was one of Trump's election lawyers and took part in meetings inside the oval office. Nor was this a secret. Trump supporters knew very well that she was speaking for Trump and that gave her credibility within that group of people.
Her audience was not "reasonable" thus her defense is not "reasonable".
'Reasonable people' wouldn't have filed such frivolous/without merit/batshit crazy claims!
Reasonable people wouldn't have voted for Trump in the 1st place.
Does this look like a "reasonable person"???
True. But Treasonable people would.
$1.3 billion is an awful lot of BJ's. poor sidney...
She's going to wear out those knee pads!
I thought "lockjaw" only came from Tetanus.... I guess not.
By admitting she lied, she has handed a win to those suing her.
So when will the NT's resident Trump supporters that touted these claims as true come in and admit they were lied to?
How about...never.
For them this is all just further evidence of how intricate and deep the conspiracy actually is. That’s the thing about conspiracy theories, every hole you poke in them and all the evidence refuting them just further strengthens them in the sick minds of conspiracy theorists.
Exactly...... She'll scream that she is being silenced next.
And they keep spinning the web wider...and wider...and wider....
Never, because the letter Q precedes the letter R.
Lets do the math...
If 74,111,419 voted for Trump, and 52% of those think the election was rigged, then there are 38,537,937 unreasonable people that voted for Trump according to Sidney's statement.
In this case does reasonable vs unreasonable equate to those with vs without critical thinking skills?
It seems as though this defense of hers is predicated on the court believing that she was just spitballing when she made allegations that Dominion rigged the election. If I recall correctly, she said at the time that she and Giuliani had "proof" of the allegations. Let's see if she produces this proof so she doesnt have to owe billions in damages to Dominion.
Well John, just like the 60 some cases that the GQP tried to make supporting voter fraud without evidence in the last election....... without proof, 59 of those 60 cases were dropped. I would say the shoe is on the other foot now.
Not only did she claim to have proof of her allegations, she also personally filed multiple lawsuits based on those allegations in addition to her spouting that bullshit on national television at every opportunity.
She totally fucked herself.
Doesn't sound like what an agile legal mind would ever expose themselves to...... Think she has a secret pardon?
She's using a lame excuse trying to find a way to cover her sorry ass, but she's still going to get royally sued into oblivion.
I would have hoped that Giuliani would have not been as stupid as she is, but it looks like will be paying the price also.
Seriously??????
This Giuliani?
He went off the deep end years ago and is now little more than a punchline. I don’t think that anyone with a shred of self-respect takes anything he says seriously considering he has the credibility of a guy screaming about the end times in his underwear on a street corner.
Is it just me or does anyone else think that Rudy may have had a stoke a few years ago? HIs behavior changed shortly before 2015.
Maybe Trump had blackmail photos of Rudy in his back pocket on the way down the escalator. So the answer to the stroke in 2015..... quite possible.
Her defense amounts to “what I was saying was so fucking dumb that there is no way anyone could actually believe it.”
And I agree with her, but I am also not one of Trump’s supporters and thus have not had a sufficient number of brain cells die over the last 5 years to make anything she said sound even remotely plausible.
Quite the conundrum.....
their heads must be spinning
I wasn't aware that defamation only applied if your reputation was only ruined with reasonable people.
Defamation: noun - the action of damaging the good reputation of someone; slander or libel.
As has been definitively proven over the last four years by Qanon dumb shits and those voting for the serial liar, con-man and accused sexual predator Trump, there are millions of irrational and unreasonable persons in America. They are the ones who believed her lies about Dominion Voting Systems. Is her defense now saying that the Trump supporters that she and Trump were specifically targeting with their lies and bullshit rhetoric don't matter because anyone who believed the lies shouldn't count just because they're unreasonable or irrational? Even if they're dumber than rocks aren't they still consumers that companies may not want their reputations ruined with? Her defense is basically saying that those unreasonable persons who bought into her lies aren't worth anything and thus it shouldn't matter if a companies reputation is ruined with worthless people who wouldn't have used a companies products anyway or been of any value to them as a prospective consumer.
So much video to review, so little time, lol.
Well it worked for Fox News defending Tucker Carlson from a defamation case
where Fox's defense was that no one takes Tucker seriously
however Tucker isn't a lawyer filing frivolous lawsuits across the country and giving pressers to convince the public
and any judges listening, to "stop the steal".
where Fox's defense was that no one takes Tucker seriously
But that's straight to one of your points point..... A bunch of people, even here on NT have admitted to thinking Tucker is worth listening too, and taking seriously.
I thought Sidney Powell was the Kraken ...
She was...the Kraken croaked.
Personally, I always believed it was very disadvantageous, perilous and illegal to lie under oath and present evidence in court that you know is false. These 'stop the steal' people did all of these things without consequence, legal or financial. So, the Kellyanne thing about 'alternative facts' is now a legal tool in our judicial system? And, if so, why?
Sadly, yes.
Damn. Then that means Trumpism is now a foundation of our democracy and legal recourse?
So this is the 'I did not think anyone with a mind would believe the bullshit I was slinging' defense. Interesting.
Well, it turns out that there are more gullible people than you thought Sidney. We have MAGAs right here who still believe that nonsense.
If you do the math, it would seem that 38.5-million that voted for Trump still believe the nonsense.
Well, as George Carlin said:
Maybe this should not be interpreted as humor.
Pondered your earlier post with the numbers.
I think the numbers do not add up or quantify anything because of this........................
So 38.5 million MAGA bots still believe the stop the steal nonsense---as far as the rest, they apparently believed in The Man Now Residing In Mar-a-Lago which is also nonsense. So, the real conundrum here is which group, the first or the last is the most nonsensical?
What we have here is an answer to a question or a question without an answer. And either of them are still centered on a false idea or a false man. See the problem here?
George left out the scary part, "and about half of them vote".
And IMO: Sadly most of that half I'm sure vote straight party line every time. Regardless of who is on the ballot, IF they even know who is on the ballot as long as that person they are granting power to has THEIR Brand on them. Either that "D" or the "R" brand.
Sad !
Probably so, but if you favor voter rights, cleaner environment, CHOICE and a few other things one wouldn't want to do the R thing, just saying.
I see the conundrum..... Both groups are basing their loyalty on lies. Would we need to apply a scale say between gullible/misinformed and bat-shit crazy/dangerous to the republic to cover the range?
True,
I guess in my utopian world people not smart enough to know what or who to vote for also aren't smart enough to know How to vote to begin with.
When ever you figure out the proper 'scale' let me know. I am indeed interested.