Kraken Law firm Sidney Powell’s Countersuit In opposition to Dominion Will get LOL-ed Out Of Court docket
(Picture by Drew Angerer/Getty Photographs)
Pour one particular out for Sidney Powell, who got laughed out of yet a further courtroom yesterday when US District Decide Carl J. Nichols dismissed her countersuit towards Dominion Voting Devices for “abuse of course of action.” And by “abuse of process” she meant “suing her for defamation,” something she deems to be by definition tortious.
“Dominion brought this situation to punish and make an example of Sidney Powell—a previous federal prosecutor who prosecuted 300 appeals on behalf of the United States—for speaking out and drawing attention to the vulnerabilities in Dominion’s election equipment and software program,” the onetime Kraken attorney huffed in reaction to a $1.3 billion defamation suit in opposition to her and her charity, Defending the Republic, soon after she accused the voting device business of stealing the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump.
Why, of course, this is the circumstance in which Powell bruited her famed “I’m much too total of shit to be taken critically, so I just cannot have defamed anyone” protection.
“Dominion initiated a public relations and suppression campaign made to silence any one and every person who experienced dared or may dare to query the trustworthiness of Dominion’s business and—with regard to this distinct lawsuit—to tarnish the reputations of Sidney Powell and Defending the Republic, Inc.” she went on.
In her telling, stop and desist letters to unrelated events with connected copies of the lawsuit from her constituted prima facie evidence that the business was abusing courtroom course of action to distract from its personal reputational issues and silence its critics. But Decide Nichols was not certain, noting in a terse 3-website page buy that abuse of approach claims ought to allege not only an ulterior motive, but also “a perversion of the judicial procedure and achievement of some close not contemplated in the regular prosecution of the demand.”
“Powell ought to allege that Dominion, following filing its fit, performed some act that perverted the judicial method,” he wrote. “But Powell’s grievance fails to link her abuse-of-procedure assert to any act that Dominion has taken other than submitting and pursuing its lawsuit. She has hence failed to condition a declare for abuse of method.” [Internal citations omitted.]
In a footnote, the court noticed that acquiring folks to shut up and quit saying lies about your organization is not an illegitimate goal of defamation litigation — it is form of the whole ballgame.
The quick get was 28 web pages shorter than the a single Choose Nichols wrote dismissing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s countersuit versus Dominion in his possess defamation action, although Lindell went the added nuts mile by interpleading Dominion’s competitor Smartmatic, which necessitated some added judicial WTF-ing. And however one particular receives the distinctive perception that Judge Nichols is finding fairly weary of paying his times dealing with the crank supporters of the male who set up him on the bench.
Unfortunately, none of the Dominion defamation satisfies on Judge Nichols’s docket, which includes a third grievance towards Rudy Giuliani, will come up for trial till early 2024, and the get-togethers seem in no temper to settle.
The kraken will never die. And neither will the yr 2020.
US Dominion Inc. v. Powell [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she writes about law and politics.