Federal judge rules Dominion Voting Systems defamation suits against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell can move forward.
QUICK FACTS:
- U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols rejected the three Trump allies’ requests to dismiss the suits, which allege that they made false and defamatory claims that the voting company rigged the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden, according to The Washington Times.
- The voting machine provider is seeking $1.3 billion in each of the three lawsuits.
WHAT THE RULING SAYS:
- “Dominion alleges that Giuliani made defamatory statements about its involvement in the 2020 election, that the people who believed those statements made threats to Dominion employees and board members, and that those threats required Dominion to spend more than $565,000 on private security to protect its employees,” the ruling reads.
- It reveals how Dominion is claiming it “suffered economic harm in the form of additional expenses that it would not have incurred if not for Giuliani’s alleged defamation, as well as the loss of future contracts.”
- The judge also rejected Ms. Powell’s claims that her alleged statements are not defamatory because they were opinions, not fact, writing “Dominion has adequately alleged that Powell made a number of statements that are actionable because a reasonable juror could conclude that they were either statements of fact or statements of opinion that implied or relied upon facts that are provably false.”
- Judge Nichols moreover ruled that Dominion had adequately alleged that Lindell “knowingly made claims that were false or with reckless disregard to the truth,” and called Lindell’s claims “inherently improbable” and his sources “unreliable.”
- Lindell “has failed to acknowledge the validity of countervailing evidence, Dominion has alleged numerous instances in which Lindell told audiences to purchase MyPillow products after making his claims of election fraud and providing MyPillow promotional codes related to those theories,” the judge wrote.
BACKGROUND:
- The decision comes the day after Dominion filed three similar election-related defamation lawsuits against Newsmax, One America News (OAN), and Patrick Byrne, the founder and former CEO of Overstock.com, notes Washington Times.
- Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said Lindell’s case is “very important” case regarding the “First Amendment,” adding that he is concerned with Dominion limiting the “free marketplace of ideas.”
