Former Trump "lawyer" Sidney Powell is facing a ruinous defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems and has come up with a novel defense strategy: If you believed what I said, you're a fool (oh, and by the way, I'm not saying what I said was false!). Take stock of that, MAGA morons!
Here's more on the pretzel logic (no offense meant to pretzels):
Sidney Powell argued Monday that she couldn’t be sued for defamation for repeatedly promoting false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being rigged because “no reasonable person would” believe that her comments “were truly statements of fact.”
In the months after the election, the Texas-based attorney became one of the most public faces of a campaign to discredit President Joe Biden’s win. Vowing to “release the Kraken,” she pushed the lie that the election was stolen from former president Donald Trump. In numerous TV and public appearances, as well as in court, Powell spread conspiracy theories that two voting equipment companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, were part of a Democrat-backed scheme to “steal” the election by rigging voting systems to flip votes for Trump to Biden, count ballots more than once, and fabricate votes for Biden. [snip]
Even if Powell’s statements were presentations of fact that could be proven as true or false, her lawyers wrote, “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.” [snip]
Even as Powell tried to distance herself from responsibility for the conspiracy theories she promoted after the election, she also disputed that the statements at issue were, in fact, false. She argued that Dominion was a “public figure” because of its prominent role in the election process, a status that set the bar higher for proving defamation and meant Dominion had to show that she acted with “actual malice.” Powell’s lawyers argued that Dominion couldn’t meet that standard because “she believed the allegations then and she believes them now.” (our emphasis)
Odds that the presiding judge is a reasonable person and will laugh those arguments out of court are very high.
Beyond the defamation suits, Powell also faces suspension or loss of her license to practice law:
Attorney ethics rules generally bar lawyers from knowingly presenting false information to a court or to an outside party as part of their work on behalf of a client. State officials in Michigan filed an ethics complaint in February against Powell with attorney disciplinary officers in Texas, where Powell is licensed to practice; attorney ethics investigations are typically conducted in secret, and there’s been no public announcement to date about the status of Michigan’s complaint.
In a (apropos) nutshell, Powell is in a world of pain:
And with this, Sidney Powell declares she must be disabarred. She is now stating that the allegations she filed in a lawsuit under penalty of perjury were BS, and she knew it. So, disbarment is number one. And "I was lying" does not obviate a defamation claim. https://t.co/7UHLSFxrfz
— Kurt "Masks Save Lives" Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) March 22, 2021
We can't wait to see how Rudy "Toot Toot" Giuliani's legal defense unfolds now.
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