WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and a pillow company will have to face litigation that alleges they defamed the company that provided voting machines during the 2020 Presidential election.
That’s because on Aug. 11, D.C. federal judge Carol Nichols rejected the motions to dismiss by those three in Dominion’s lawsuits against them. The company is claiming defamation after Powell and Giuliani engaged in litigation that claimed Dominion fixed the election for Joe Biden and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell made similar statements.
The lawsuits filed by Powell in hotly contested regions have blown up in the former federal prosecutor’s face. Judges have criticized her for providing no evidence the election was rigged against Donald Trump.
After the election, Powell and Giuliani appeared at a press conference together to say they represented Trump and his campaign. Powell called Dominion a tool created to make sure Hugo Chavez never lost an election in Venezuela and said the company was imported to the United States for a similar purpose.
“After Dominion repeatedly put Lindell on formal written notice of specific facts and evidence disproving his false claims, and let him know that the lies were putting people’s lives in danger, Lindell repeated his lies and said, ‘I welcome them to come after me because I’ve got all the evidence and then they’ll finally see it,’ and ‘I dare Dominion to sue me, because then it will get out faster,’” the lawsuit says.
The amount of statements Dominion alleges were defamatory was too countless for Nichols to fully summarize, he wrote. Dominion says it has suffered more than $650 million in damages.
Nichols ruled against transferring the cases to other jurisdictions that the defendants said were more appropriate.
“(O)n a motion to dismiss for improper venue, the question is not ‘which district is the ‘best’ venue’ or which ‘has the most significant connection’; it is ‘whether the district the plaintiff chose had a substantial connection to the claim,’” Nichols wrote.
“And Dominion has easily alleged in-District conduct comprising ‘a substantial part’ of the events giving rise to its claims: this is where Powell made numerous in-person and televised appearances in which she voiced her claims to D.C. audiences, where she rented hotel rooms and represented Michael Flynn, and where Lindell touted his relationship with President Trump and spoke at several in-person rallies.”