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The voting technology company at the center of President Donald Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election is suing his former lawyer for $1.3 billion in damages.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Dominion Voting Systems, claims Trump’s one-time lawyer Sidney Powell has made “wild accusations” that “are demonstrably false.”<\/p>\n
“Dominion brings this action to set the record straight,” the lawsuit states, adding that, in addition to recovering “compensatory and punitive damages,” the company also seeks “to stand up for itself and its employees.”<\/p>\n
“As a result of the viral disinformation campaign against Dominion, the company and its employees have been targeted and have received calls for jail time and death threats,” the company’s lawsuit adds.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit names Powell, her Texas-based law firm, and Defending the Republic, a company The Washington Post<\/em> reports Powell set up to ask for donations in support of her election-related work.<\/p>\n Powell, 65, has repeatedly pointed to false and dizzying conspiracy theories in interviews, press conferences, and on social media, while trying to explain how Trump, 74, lost the election to President-elect Joe Biden.<\/p>\n In reality, seven million more Americans voted for Biden, 78, and the president-elect won the Electoral College vote by a 306-232 margin.<\/p>\n The Trump campaign appeared to distance itself from Powell in late November, claiming the Texas attorney had been “practicing law on her own.” Earlier that month, Powell spoke at a Trump campaign press conference along with attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, whom the president had referred to as his “elite strike force” in a previous tweet.<\/p>\n “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team,” Giuliani and Ellis claimed at the time. “She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”<\/p>\n Since December, more than 4,000 lawyers across the country have signed an open letter calling on “bar disciplinary authorities” to investigate Powell’s behavior.<\/p>\n Powell has alleged — without evidence — that Dominion had been created in Venezuela with the intention of changing votes for the late Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez and that the systems were in fact secretly capable of switching, creating and destroying massive amounts of votes.<\/p>\n There is no evidence to support those claims: Dominion was founded in Toronto and is currently based in Denver.<\/p>\n The lawsuit also states that “there are mountains of direct evidence that conclusively disprove Powell’s vote manipulation claims” against the company.<\/p>\n Powell alleged in a tweet on Friday afternoon that Dominion’s lawsuit was “filed to harass, intimidate, & to drain” her of financial resources.<\/p>\n "We're filing this lawsuit because 300 families have staked their livelihoods on this company," Dominion CEO John Poulos said Friday, NPR reports. "Words don't describe the effect. Lives have been upended."<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/imagesvc.meredithcorp.io\/v3\/mm\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F20%2F2020%2F11%2F23%2FSidney-Powell-3.jpg\")
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