Dominion vs. Powell

 Today the first lawsuit has been filed by Dominion against Attorney Sidney Powell. The 124-page complaint asks for compensatory and punitive damages of $1.3 billion. Compensatory damages cover actual monetary losses; punitive damages are designed to discourage similar types of activity in the future. The complaint also asks for a limited injunction “granting a narrowly tailored permanent injunction requiring the removal of all the Defendants’ statements that are determined to be false and defamatory and enjoining the Defendants from repeating such statements or engaging in any further deceptive trade practices relating to Dominion.” The specific allegations implicate other individuals as well, so it is not at all unlikely that other individuals may later be added as defendants to this case or become the subject of other litigation.

You will likely be reading some commentary that accepts all of the allegations in the complaint to be true. That would be a mistake. Remember that Trump and his cohorts filed more than 60 post-election lawsuits and lost all of them. This is merely the first step in the process. There will be a vigorous response to this suit and the litigation will likely be with us for a long time.

That said, my first reaction is that the complaint is at least well written and contains highly specific allegations. Here is one example from the complaint:

“During a Newsmax interview on November 17, Powell claimed to have bombshell evidence to substantiate her wild accusations: she promised to tweet out a video of Dominion’s founder publicly admitting he “can change a million votes, no problem at all.” Powell never tweeted out such a video because it does not exist. The video does not exist because no such statement was ever made, nor would it be made, by Dominion’s founder.”

As I said before, it remains to be seen whether these allegations can be proven. However, they are substantial in their detail and scope. If you wish to read the complaint yourself, here is a link: gov.uscourts.dcd.225699.1.0_2.pdf (courtlistener.com). [Written on January 8, 2021]