While the election was being contested last year by the Trump campaign and separately by Sidney Powell, I said last year that we would see if Powell really had the goods that she claimed to have on Dominion. I was certainly open to her being as truthful as she had stated, especially after she stated that she was risking her reputation on all of this.
But as it turns out, it doesn’t look like she had the goods at all and she’s not even trying to prove anymore that she does:
LAW AND CRIME – Facing more than $1.3 billion in liabilities over her post-election conspiracy theories, lawyer Sidney Powell told a judge that the defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems filed against her earlier this year should be dismissed because “no reasonable person” would believe that her well-publicized comments about an international plot against former President Donald Trump were “statements of fact.”
“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,” her attorneys wrote in a 54-page motion to dismiss on Monday, noting that Dominion characterized her theories as “wild accusations” and “outlandish claims.”
“They are repeatedly labelled ‘inherently improbable’ and even ‘impossible,’” the motion to dismiss continues, referring to the conspiracy theories peddled by Powell, her law firm and her non-profit group Defending the Republic. “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.”
Signed by Powell’s lawyer Lawrence J. Joseph, the memo shows Powell’s legal strategy for attempting to jettison a potentially billion-dollar price tag over what came to be known as the “Kraken” lawsuits, named after the mythical, octopus-like creature depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster Clash of the Titans. In the movie, the monster was easily slain, and 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.
In her motion to dismiss, Powell does not argue that the statements were true. She claims they are not actionable because they are protected statements of political opinion.
“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.’”
When Powell repeated her conspiracy theories on Fox News, Fox Business Network and The Epoch Times, her lawyers claim, she was just informing the public about the ideas that she was advancing in her lawsuits.
“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,” her memo states.
So what Powell’s lawyers appear to be arguing is that when she went on all of these talk shows to describe her case against Dominion, where she made assertions against Dominion that they both rebutted and forced networks to disavow, she was just giving her opinion and not making any statements of fact.
But that seems ludicrous to me, because while she certainly has a right to her opinion, what she was describing in many of these shows was the ‘facts’ of her case, which don’t appear to be facts at all now. She’s not even trying to make her case now, she’s trying to get it dismissed, as Ed Morrissey noted at Hotair:
Read the full complaint here, which is notable for its lack of attempt to win the case by proving Powell’s “Kraken” allegations about Dominion. Remember when Powell’s supporters insisted that Dominion had played right into Powell’s hands by opening themselves up to discovery? Nothing in this filing argues for the positive defense of Powell’s statements being the truth. Instead, it’s filled with arguments about jurisdiction, venue, opinion, and lack of malice. Those are not the arguments of a respondent about to drop a truth bomb in a defamation case, or even setting up a fight for discovery on those points.
So there’s another disappointment from the 2020 elections. First it was Lin Wood, who Powell partnered with, making insane statements about Mike Pence’s assassination. And now it appears that Powell’s kraken case wasn’t what she claimed it was either, and her reputation will suffer because of it.
I guess we fully understand now why Rudy Giuliani dumped Powell last year and the Trump campaign distanced themselves from her.
UPDATE: Sidney Powell’s lawyers have released this statement decrying the fake narrative surrounding their call for dismissal:
