Sydney Powell is a patriot who has risked it all for this country.
FYI
It is becoming much harder to discern the nuggets of truth through the lens of the media. All media including “conservative” media.
Bongino is right. Whenever a story breaks wait 24 hours to draw conclusions because everyone spins everything to an agenda.
It looks to me like she is arguing no reasonable person would conclude her accusations were ALREADY PROVEN FACT, but rather conclude they were her sincerely held beliefs based on what she knew at the time that would require proving via a court battle.
Not that her accusations were so ridiculous that no reasonable person COULD believe them. Or so ridiculous that she was insane to make them. Just that they would not be accepted as factual by most people unless proven in a future court case. And thus Dominion did not suffer damage because there would be no damage to its reputation UNLESS proven in court - which she never had the chance to do.
It is just common sense in this case. You don’t even get close to the Supreme Court with outlandish claims or conspiracy theory. She has used much the same language of the entire operation as more than any law abiding citizen could believe in interviews since the beginning. It isn’t backtracking, it is highlighting the unbelievability of what took place (not untruth).
I back her. She is the real deal.
Yes she is
“Sidney Powell has moved to dismiss Dominion’s defamation lawsuit. She argues that when she accused Dominion of being part of an election-rigging scheme with ties to Venezuela, “no reasonable person would conclude” those “were truly statements of fact” “
She is telling the truth. No reasonable person would ever have believed that was a statement of fact. I’m not sure you could sell it as parody.
That some people pretended to believe this (I can only hope they just pretended), is not really the point.
I believe this is to show that Dominion has no grounds for claiming defamation. If no one believes Dominion caused any harm by Powell’s statements they can hardly claim they were defamed since their public perception was not changed.
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Voter fraud happens in almost all third world nations including ours and nothing is being done against it. We have accepted it and we now experience the consequences.
Voter fraud happens in almost all third world nations including ours and nothing is being done against it. We have accepted it and we now experience the consequences.
I think you are making a good point. This is not backtracking and it is not a betrayal of the people who believed her allegations or believed she had the proof.
This is a legal argument that her allegations were made in the political arena and that l, as such, they should be protected under the first amendment, and not be subject to liable and defamation laws.
Similarly, President Trump can not sue the Democrat party, or anyone else who said he murdered half a million people by mismanaging his administration’s covid response. Why? Because reasonable people would recognize that the allegations were made in the political arena, and would therefore not allow their opinions to be sufficiently influenced by them to result in liable or defamation.
It makes perfect sense that her lawyers would make this argument - and I agree that it has nothing to do with whether or not she still stands by her allegations.
This whole thing has me baffled.
Dominion describe her statements as ‘wild accusations’ and ‘outlandish claims’ when lodging the suit - in effect they’re saying that no matter how “improbable” her claims might appear to “any reasonable person”, she damaged their reputation by making them in the first place.
They aren’t concerned with what “reasonable people” think. Their lawsuit is based on the fact that many unreasonable people still do believe her claims even after she’s effectively disavowed them. Moreover, many reasonable people thought her claims were plausible even after Trump and Guliani distanced themselves from her.
Dominion might identify a handful of right wing pro-Trump decision makers with influence over whether or not Dominion plays any further part in any future election. If they can demonstrate those folks taking what Sidney said as fact, that may be enough to demonstrate “harm”.
The focus then moves to “mens rea” and “actual malice”. Was the harm intentional? Or was there a reckless disregard for whether or not her allegations might be true?
I’m pretty sure that “No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact” (from her lawyers) harms her defense far more than it helps on both counts. Why did she make those claims publicly - and repeatedly - if she knew for a fact, all along, that she couldn’t possibly present them in a court because there was nothing in there that would convince a “reasonable person”?
What worries me is, it smells to me like she knew all along that what she was saying couldn’t survive five minutes of cross-examination (and Trump and Guliani knew that too), but by throwing the accusations out there she could fire up the pro-Trump troops. Especially the ones who go entirely by gut feeling and faith, who were reacting to their emotions and weren’t interested in seeing hard facts.
Powell explicitly and very specifically accused Dominion of writing software to manipulate the Chavez elections before selling that same software to the United States for the express purpose of manipulating elections there. No innuendo there, no room for interpretation.
That sort of thing amounted to a very plausible, very authentic sounding, very SPECIFIC and very forensic charge, with a strong implication of “I can prove all of this is true”.
If she now thinks that no reasonable person would’ve bought it IN the courtroom, then it means she had not one shred of credible evidence to back that accusation up in the first place. So she crafted the charge. That demonstrates intent. Which in turn can be presented as malice aforethought.
Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.
Cool trick. You can make any half-baked, fabricated claim you want but can't be held accountable until someone else proves your idiocy in court.
Nice way to shift the burden of proof.