Attorney Sidney Powell, who filed multiple unsuccessful lawsuits alleging a widespread conspiracy of voter fraud in the 2020 election, was sued for defamation on Friday by Dominion Voting Systems.
Dominion, a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, was central to claims Powell and others made about votes being switched from President Trump to President-elect Joe Biden and foreign interference in the election. The lawsuit seeks $1.3 billion from Powell, who claimed that Dominion machines used software manufactured in Venezuela to help Hugo Chavez fraudulently win elections, among other unproven accusations. Dominion is an American company based in Denver and Toronto and has no ownership ties to the government of Venezuela.
“Powell’s wild accusations are demonstrably false,” the company said in its complaint. “Acting in concert with allies and media outlets that were determined to promote a false preconceived narrative about the 2020 election, Powell launched a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion that reached millions of people and caused enormous harm to Dominion.”
Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Sidney Powell is thorough.
https://t.co/NsW05nJ0wQ
— Jerry Dunleavy (@Jerry Dunleavy)1610116519.0
“As a result of the defamatory falsehoods peddled by Powell … Dominion’s founder, Dominion’s employees, Georgia’s governor, and Georgia’s secretary of state have been harassed and have received death threats, and Dominion has suffered enormous harm,” Dominion’s lawsuit states.
Last month, Dominion and Smartmatic, another voting machine company named in conspiratorial claims about the 2020 election, each sent letters to Fox News, One America News Network, Epoch Times, and other media outlets and personalities who repeated Powell’s claims threatening imminent legal action. In response, Fox and other outlets aired segments with corrections debunking some false claims about the election. Still, more lawsuits from Dominion are likely.
Powell was also issued formal notice by Dominion, and the company requested that she retract her claims, which the lawsuit recounts.
“After Dominion sent Powell a letter putting her on formal notice of the facts and the death threats and asking her to retract her false claims, Powell doubled down, tweeting to her 1.2 million Twitter followers that she heard that ‘#Dominion’ had written to her and that, although she had not even seen Dominion’s letter yet, she was ‘retracting nothing’ because ‘[w]e have #evidence’ and ‘They are #fraud masters!'” it states.
“Dominion brings this action to set the record straight, to vindicate the company’s rights under civil law, to recover compensatory and punitive damages, to seek a narrowly tailored injunction, and to stand up for itself and its employees,” the lawsuit declares.
“It’s very easy to say something on Twitter without evidence,” Dominion chief executive officer John Poulos told reporters Friday. “It is another thing to have to come forward in a court of law and identify your basis for making these statements.”