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“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.”
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So said attorneys for Republican lawyer Sidney Powell as they sought to dismiss a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Powell by the election security company Dominion Voting Systems.
Dominion Voting Systems says Powell was part of the misinformation campaign surrounding the 2020 presidential election after she repeatedly called the election’s results into question during statements and TV appearances. Among other things, Powell claimed that the company’s voting machines rigged the election for Joe Biden, something that was never proved to be true.
Powell’s court motion also says “all the allegedly defamatory statements attributed to Defendants were made as part of the normal process of litigating issues of momentous significance and immense public interest.”
Powell was described as a member of Trump’s legal team multiple times around the election, even appearing at several news conferences with President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. But in November 2020 the Trump campaign said, “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” the Trump campaign said. “She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.”
Dominion Voting Systems’s $1.3 billion lawsuit was filed shortly after the insurrection on the capitol on Jan. 6, and said Powell’s claims helped create the attack. The company has also sued Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over election claims.
