Former Trump Campaign Lawyer Sued by Voting Machine Company
WASHINGTON — Voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems Corp. sued former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell Friday in a lawsuit seeking $1.3 billion in damages for defamation.
The lawsuit called Powell’s accusations that Dominion fraudulently deleted or changed votes to defeat President Donald Trump in the 2020 election “wild” and “demonstrably false.”
Machines manufactured by Denver-based Dominion were used to process votes in 28 states, including the swing states of Georgia and Wisconsin.
After Trump lost the election, Powell accused Dominion of participating in an international conspiracy to transfer millions of votes to President-elect Joe Biden. The accusations were discredited by election technology experts, government and voting industry officials, as well as the federal government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The accuracy of Dominion’s machines was further confirmed by hand recounts of votes in Georgia and Wisconsin.
Nevertheless, Powell said in media interviews that the company’s software was developed in Venezuela to rig the U.S. election. She also insinuated that Dominion’s directors bribed Georgia officials to give Biden a slim margin of victory in the state.
“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,” says the company’s lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Trump made similar accusations of election fraud about Dominion at rallies and on social media.
The 124-page lawsuit includes screengrabs from Twitter and transcripts from media interviews that Powell gave in radio and television appearances.
Among her other accusations, Powell said Dominion used algorithms in its software to “flip” votes. She also said the company bribed Georgia’s governor and secretary of state, according to the lawsuit.
At one point, Powell said she had a video of Dominion’s founder admitting he “can change a million votes, no problem at all.” She never produced the video for public display, the lawsuit says.
“Powell’s ‘evidence’ included declarations from a motley crew of conspiracy theorists, con artists, armchair ‘experts,’ and anonymous sources who were judicially determined to be ‘wholly unreliable,'” according to the lawsuit filed by the Alexandria, Va.-based law firm of Clare Locke LLP.
For damages, Dominion claims harm to its finances and business reputation. The lawsuit includes tweets and messages that called for prosecuting or executing Dominion employees.
Powell lost supporters even from the Trump campaign and conservative Republican senators shortly after she started making the accusations.
A Nov. 22 Trump campaign statement said, “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.”
In addition to the claim for monetary damages, the Dominion lawsuit seeks an injunction prohibiting her from repeating her accusations.
The lawsuit names the nonprofit group Defending the Republic as a co-defendant. Its website says Powell established the nonprofit after the 2020 election to use litigation to “defend and to protect the integrity of elections in the United States.”
Powell has filed lawsuits in several states alleging voter fraud. All of them were dismissed.
One of them was filed to contest the vote in Michigan, where attorneys for the city of Detroit this week filed a court motion to disbar Powell. “There are so many objectively false allegations in [Powell’s lawsuit] that it is not possible to address all of them in a single brief,” the motion says.
Biden won Michigan with 50.6 percent of the popular vote compared with 47.8 percent for Trump.
The Dominion lawsuit is filed as U.S. Dominion Inc. et al. v. Sidney Powell et al., case number 1:21-cv-00040, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.