Dominion Voting Systems files $1.3B defamation suit against ex-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell

Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit against attorney Sidney Powell over her claims that the company, which manufactured electronic voting machines used by some districts in the 2020 election, changed votes for President Donald Trump to votes for President-elect Joe Biden.

Powell's wide-ranging conspiracy theory variously implicated Dominion, deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, the CIA and Chinese communists in a plot to rig the election against Trump. But federal and state judges repeatedly rejected, sometimes derisively, her efforts to prove her assertions in court.

"Powell’s wild accusations are demonstrably false," Dominion's lawsuit says. "Far from being created in Venezuela to rig elections for a now-deceased Venezuelan dictator, Dominion was founded in Toronto for the purpose of creating a fully auditable paper-based vote system that would empower people with disabilities to vote independently on verifiable paper ballots."

The Colorado-based company says the paper ballot safeguards used by its machines would have made the sort of plot alleged by Powell impossible.

The suit says her claims are not rooted in any factual basis but instead rely on "declarations from a motley crew of conspiracy theorists, con artists, armchair 'experts,' and anonymous sources who were judicially determined to be 'wholly unreliable.' "

Dominion seeks compensatory damages of $651,735,000, punitive damages of $651,735,000 and reimbursement for its legal costs. It also is asking the court to grant "a narrowly tailored permanent injunction requiring the removal of all the Defendants’ statements that are determined to be false and defamatory."

The company sent Powell a retraction demand in December, prompting her to tweet she was "retracting nothing." Dominion sent similar demands to numerous people and news media companies, including Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Fox News and attorney Lin Wood – who told The Washington Post he was representing Powell in the defamation case.

"I haven’t seen the lawsuit, but I don’t have any concerns about Dominion," Wood told the Post.

Other defamation lawsuits are likely to follow against those who made similar allegations against Dominion and the media platforms that permitted them to share their unfounded claims. An attorney for Dominion, Thomas Clare, told the Post the company went after Powell first "because she’s been the most prolific and in many ways has been the originator of these false statements."

Powell repeatedly made claims of an anti-Trump plot in the weeks after the Nov. 3 election and was part of multiple legal efforts to overturn the results. She worked with the Trump campaign's legal team for a time, and appeared at a news conference with Trump attorneys Giuliani and Jenna Ellis. But as Powell's conspiracy theories drew national attention and ridicule, Giuliani and Ellis said in a Nov. 22 statement that she was "practicing law on her own."

"She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity," they said.

Despite his legal team's disavowal of the controversial attorney, Trump still sought her advice and included her in a Dec. 18 Oval Office meeting where he reportedly considered naming her as a special counsel to investigate her own allegations of fraud.

Eric Coomer, security director at Dominion, has also sued Powell for defamation. His lawsuit also named conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway Pundit, Colorado conservative activist Joseph Oltmann, and conservative media Newsmax and One America News Network.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sidney Powell faces $1.3B defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems