Sidney Powell Argues Her Dominion Defamation Lawsuit Be Tossed Because "No Reasonable Person" Would Believe Her

Former Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell moved to dismiss a lawsuit filed against her by Dominion Voting Systems Monday, arguing her earlier claims that Dominion was involved in an orchestrated voter fraud effort were so outrageous that “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact.”

Powell’s lawyers argued her claims that Dominion worked with Democrats to rig its voting machines to ensure a win for Joe Biden were clearly her own “opinions and legal theories” and not statements that the public would immediately believe.

According to the lawyers, Dominion’s descriptions of Powell’s statements as “wild accusations” and “outlandish claims” support the idea that a reasonable person would not automatically believe her.

Her claims were made as she served on former President Donald Trump’s legal team, which was tasked with challenging the results of the 2020 election in courts across the country after he lost to Biden, all of which were thrown out.

Powell’s lawyers, in documents filed in Washington, D.C., pointed to previous court rulings that state political language “is often vituperative, abusive and inexact,” and that it is a “well recognized principle that political statements are inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.”

The lawyers also wrote that the complaint, filed in Washington, D.C., does not have enough connection to the area and requested for the case to be transferred to a district court in Texas, Powell’s home state, if it’s not dropped altogether.

“Those members of the public who were interested in the controversy were free to, and did, review that evidence and reached their own conclusions—or awaited resolution of the matter by the courts before making up their minds,” Powell’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

Source

I believe some refer to this as the Tucker Carlson defence.

Isn't this basically admitting guilt in the lawsuit by Dominion? Thoughts?

JFC these people....

Did you actually read through the filing?

I mean, the filing is right there at the link to click on and you can do a search for the phrase.

This makes sense, because “when a defendant provides the facts underlying the challenged statements, it is ‘clear that the challenged statements represent his own interpretation of those facts,’ which ‘leav[es] the reader free to draw his own conclusions.’” Bauman v. Butowsky, 377 F. Supp. 3d 1, 11 at n. 7 (D.D.C. 2019) (quoting Adelson v. Harris, 973 F. Supp. 2d 467, 490 (S.D.N.Y. 2013), aff’d 774 F.3d 803 (2d Cir. 2014)). “When ‘the bases for … the conclusion are fully disclosed, no reasonable reader would consider the term anything but the opinion of the author drawn from the circumstances related.’

It's clearly saying that people knew her interpretations of the facts were her opinions. Nowhere does it say the case should be dismissed because no reasonable person would believe her.

Ah, so I can just declare 'It's just my opinion', after everything I say, absolving me of any responsibility. That's the equivalent of Homer Simpson covering his eyes and saying 'If I didn't see it it's not illegal!'

Brilliant defense.

Doesn't something like 70% of Republicans still believe the claims?

And how can they claim they are not guilty of what she was accused of in the defamation suit by Dominion by this?

Same defense Fox News tried about Tucker Carlson's comments. It's not a defense though for defamation.

This defense would only really work if no one believed her. But, as she is a public official...and as there was an attempted insurrection...and right-wing voters actually believe this stuff...she needs to be held accountable for spreading falsehoods.

If there are negative consequences because of your speech and on a massive scale, I don't think "I Was just joking" is a good defense.

I mean, what if this were any other crime? "No your honor, I clearly was joking when I shot that man. I meant to shoot at the ground, how could I have known the bullet would have ricocheted and hit him. Clearly I was just pranking him!"

She had some batshit "opinions". Even you won't challenge that.

Her and Giuliani aka the Lizard King were quite impressive in their idiocy.

Yeah, it was a very high % of Republicans (70-75%) in January who thought Trump should have actually won due to lies like this. We also had the Trumper Terror attack on the Capitol due to these kind of lies. On top of all that, we now have 100+ voter suppression bills that stemmed from the 2020 election/voting lies spread by people like Powell and Trump.

These false "opinions" by many people sure caused a shit load of trouble.

lets put them into some snow.

Does it matter? The article said something completely false, and posted the link to the filing banking on the majority of their readers not reading it for themselves. Had you read it yourself you probably wouldn't have started this thread in a statement reiterating the false claims made by Forbes.

I'm no fan of Powell's, not even a fan of Trump's, but I am even less of a fan of divisive fake news. If they want to run a negative article on her, by all means, do so, but they need to find honest and factual material to do it with, not make something up and insult the intelligence of those who read it. The fact they blatantly lied to you, and you trusted them not to should irk you as well.

@eoten: How is the article false?
Given the claim that no reasonable person would believe her, yet so many Republicans did, that would mean republicans are mostly unreasonable...

How is it correct? What the article claims was said in the filing, wasn't in the filing. The only people making the claim that no reasonable person would believe her was the one writing the article. It wasn't a claim that was made by her team. That's fake news and you fell for it.

What did Jim Morrison ever do to you?

She claimed to have 100% proof for cheating in the election. That was a fact according to her. Now you are saying it was her opinion?

Why did she never add that disclaimer herself? Being a lawyer, she of all people should have known this.

Not to mention that she took these "opinions" to court to overturn the election, so wouldn't these be on the record as fact? (Unless she pulled a Giuliani and said one thing in court and a completely another thing to the media).

If you can claim “what I said was my opinion” regardless of the reach, conviction, and financial damage of your statements, then libel and slander effectively do not exist.

Tucker was different. He’s an entertainer. Rudy and Powell are lawyers. As someone else said, they should know better.

I believe the claims she is sued for were public claims.

Then Fox shouldn't call themselves a news show. But it doesn't matter what you call a program. If you spread lies that harm someone you can be sued.

That isn't what an opinion is.

Also known as the "it's just a prank, bro!" defense.

Just owning the liberals. Please donate.

lol.

so the argument shifts from "powell knowingly deceived people and defamed dominion"

to "powell is such a fucking idiot that her opinion based on the facts is batshit crazy and therefore doesn't qualify as defamation"

I couldn't care less. I never said it was or wasn't. I was posting the section of the document that the article misquoted and tried to claim something was said that actually wasn't. That's how disinformation and rumors and theories based on that disinformation gets started.

You're arguing the wrong point. I never said her beliefs or statements were true or false. I am pointing out that what her defense actually stated is completely different from what the article claimed was being stated, and by extension, what you have claimed was said.

If you want to argue whether or not she was right or wrong, that's a different topic, and I don't care either way. But if you want some more facts on the matter, in a libel/slander case the plaintiff generally has to prove they've suffered some kind of damage. If they cannot prove they were somehow harmed by her statements, then their case will fail.

If the thing they're claiming are opinions aren't opinions, that should lead you to question how they can claim that, "no reasonable reader would consider the term anything but the opinion of the author drawn from the circumstances related." That would be quite puzzling if the answer wasn't in the portion you quoted above - "when a defendant provides the facts underlying the challenged statements, it is ‘clear that the challenged statements represent his own interpretation of those facts." Their case is arguing that the facts don't support her conclusion, and that no reasonable person would conclude otherwise. Thus, Horgen's claim in the OP that the defense is claiming that no reasonable would believe her is indeed the case.

To further expound on the point, I took your advice to open the filing and search for your excerpt for further context. I was curious what the phrase, "This makes sense" was referencing, and this is what I found.

The Court thus concluded: [Milkovich] unquestionably excludes from defamation liability not only statements of rhetorical hyperbole – the type of speech at issue in the Bressler-Letter Carriers-Falwell cases – but also statements clearly recognizable as pure opinion because their factual premises are revealed. Both type of assertions have an identical impact on readers – neither reasonably appearing factual – and hence are protected equally under the principles espoused in Milkovich.

Further reinforcing the point that it states' precisely what Horgen says it does - that no reasonable person would believe the claims.

So you're upset about the paraphrasing used, and this is more of a semantics debate.

How boring.

It wasn't paraphrasing, it was blatant dishonesty. There's plenty of material to use against Powell, there's no need to defend dishonest, intentionally divisive propaganda.

@eoten: could you direct me to the pertinent portion you excerpted in the argument? The thing is 90 pages.

@MirkoS77: Just search for, "this makes sense"

Page 22, bottom, I think. page 36 by the pdf

The only time disinformation makes sense is when you care more about confirming a preconceived notion than actual fact. It may make sense because it's what you'd like to be true, so in your mind it must be, but that's how propaganda works and how it spreads division.

@eoten: Um, I was literally telling that user to search for the phrase " this makes sense" in the filing because it's a phrase unique in the document and leads the quote in your post. It's how I found the excerpt in it myself.

@horgen: thanks

Aah, ok then. I just searched for the quoted phrase used in the article itself. "No reasonable."