Trump Lawyer Sued For $1.3 Billion Over Vote Fraud Claims
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A pro-Trump lawyer is being sued for $1.3 billion after claiming a company providing voting machines and software to several US states rigged the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
In the newly filed defamation lawsuit, Dominion Voting Systems said the ‘wild’ and ‘demonstrably false’ allegations had caused material harm to the company’s reputation and and financial value.
Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor and one of the leading legal voices involved in Trump’s doomed campaign to overturn the results of November’s election, is said to have ‘falsely claimed that Dominion had rigged the election, that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chávez, and that Dominion bribed Georgia officials for a no-bid contract,’ the lawsuit states.
Claims of illegal ballot stuffing and other forms of vote manipulation have been comprehensively rejected by courts and election officials across America, but Powell’s false accusations have become a popular conspiracy theory among right-wing voters, and have also been promoted by Trump himself, Forbes reports.
The lawsuit, which was filed with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Washington DC, argues that Powell engaged in the ‘viral disinformation campaign’ in order to ‘financially enrich herself, to raise her public profile, and to ingratiate herself to Donald Trump’.
Dominion CEO John Poulos, who is seeking a full trial rather than a settlement, said that he hoped the lawsuit would clear his company’s name, but added that proving Powell wrong in court was ‘important for the entire electoral process’.
According to The Washington Post, Powell’s campaign led to fears for the safety of Dominion employees, many of whom were stalked and harassed, with some even receiving death threats. The lawsuit states that since the election, Dominion has had to spend more than half a million dollars on security for its staff.
Several Trump associates have given airtime to Powell over the past few months, including Rudy Giuliani and Fox News. Dominion attorney, Thomas A. Clare refused to rule out the possibility that the company may file lawsuits against some of these people, including Trump himself.
Clare said:
[Powell has] been the most prolific and in many ways has been the originator of these false statements.
But to be clear, none of this would have been possible without other individuals and without other media outlets that have their own responsibility. And we’re looking at all of them.
Clare added: We’re going to follow this wherever the evidence leads us.
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Topics: News, Election fraud, Lawsuit, Now, Trump
