Lawsuit City

Santa Fe NM

Description

A federal judge on Wednesday denied Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell's motion to dismiss multibillion-dollar lawsuits involving their claims about the 2020 presidential election. Why it matters: The lawsuits argue that the Trump allies' false claims of election fraud defamed the Dominion voting equipment company. Powell, an attorney, and Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, both worked for the Trump campaign. Lindell is a conspiracy theorist whose bedding company took off after he began amplifying Trump's claims of fraud. The defendants attempted to block the defamation lawsuits on procedural and First Amendment grounds. What they're saying: "As an initial matter, there is no blanket immunity for statements that are ‘political’ in nature," U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols wrote in his opinion. "It is true that courts recognize the value in some level of ‘imaginative expression’ or ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ in our public debate. … But it is simply not the law that provably false statements cannot be actionable if made in the context of an election." Nichols wrote in his decision that the First Amendment does not offer "blanket immunity" to Powell and Lindell. He also dismissed Giuliani's argument that Dominion did not plead damages with enough specificity. Many of the Trump allies' statements, as cited in the suit, qualify as comments with factual claims which can be proven true or false, Nichols wrote. "The question, then, is whether a reasonable juror could conclude that Powell’s statements expressed or implied a verifiably false fact about Dominion," he said. "This is not a close call."