A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has denied the motion to dismiss Dominion Voting System’s defamation lawsuits against Donald Trump acolytes and Kraken-heads Sidney Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, and Mike Lindell. CNN reporter Marshall Cohen added the judge making the decision was appointed by Donald Trump himself. This is a separate lawsuit from the ones Fox News and OAN and Newsmax are fighting for slandering Dominion Voting Systems over the 2020 shellacking Donald Trump took at the hands of good sense and Joe Biden.
This means the three fascist-kateers will continue to face Dominion’s demands for $1.3 billion in damages after they accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election. The motion to dismiss was denied by Judge Carl Nichols, who didn’t buy Powell’s defense that no one should ever believe a thing she says (that was her actual defense, by the way). Giuliani’s motion arguing that Dominion didn’t explain exactly why they wanted so much money out of the seemingly broke and disgraced lawyer didn’t sway the court, either. Nichols found Dominion’s allegations that they have lost profits due to the bananas cuckoo-clock things Rudy has said have been presented “with adequate specificity and survives Giuliani’s Motion to Dismiss.”
Lindell’s motion for dismissal was based entirely on where Dominion filed its suit against him. The MyPillow man claimed that his business is in Minnesota and therefore, Dominion should have sued him on his home turf. Dominion argued that while they could file a lawsuit there, Mr. Pillow-brain did so much defaming and lying in Washington, D.C., alongside the disgraced former guy that they felt D.C. had more of an interest in deciding what to do about Lindell. Nichols writes: “Lindell has thus failed to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that transfer is warranted, and the Court declines to transfer the case against him.”
This means these three anti-democracy charlatans must continue to face the legal music as the case moves forward. Nichols also concluded that the First Amendment did not provide “blanket immunity” to the three under a banner of free speech.
As an initial matter, there is no blanket immunity for statements that are “political” in nature: as the Court of Appeals has put it, the fact that statements were made in a “political ‘context’ does not indiscriminately immunize every statement contained therein.” 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.
Lindell has attempted to file a disparate conspiracy-laden lawsuit against Dominion in some attempt at playing offense, while Giuliani is reportedly stooping to recording Cameo greetings for a few hundred bucks a pop.* Powell seems to be working on a defense that she isn’t a believable person, and therefore cannot defame anything.
Thoughts and prayers.
*True story.