Did Dominion Voting Systems Lose Its Lawsuits Against Giuliani and Powell?

No.

By
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In January of this year, Dominion Voting Systems filed defamation lawsuits against Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell, a former member of Trump’s legal team who was disavowed by the Trump campaign. Both Giuliani and Powell pushed false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, claiming that Dominion’s voting technology was used to steal the election from Trump. Dominion is seeking at least $1.3 billion in damages. 

According to court records, Dominion’s lawsuit against Powell arose “from statements made by Sidney Powell, who—acting in concert with allies and media outlets determined to promote a false preconceived narrative about the 2020 election—caused unprecedented harm.”

Similarly, Dominion’s statement on Giuliani’s defamation suit, per court records, claims that “he [Giuliani] and his allies manufactured and disseminated the ‘Big Lie,’ which foreseeably went viral and deceived millions of people into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election.”

A viral social media post claims  “Dominion lost their lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Dr Mantis Toboggan

    I’m wanting to see Powell & Giuliani raise and then prove that their statements were true, truth of the statements being a defense to a defamation claim.

    People want their trial on the merits, here’s a chance to get it.

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      Paul Britton

      I think we already know what their defense is: “Only an idiot would have actually believed the stuff we were saying!”

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        Dr Mantis Toboggan

        Ha ha! True!

        The only defense that might possibly work.

        Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there wo actually DO believe this stuff, and hold a hope that springs eternal because none of the lawsuits have reached the merits to the point where the factual claims have been presented and evidence evaluated. The vast majority were so clearly bogus that they were disposed of on procedural grounds.

        I truly hope that doesn’t happen here, because a trial on the facts will be entertaining as heck. And hopefully put at least some of this to rest.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    Thanks for this link-filled fact-check. The links to the "court records" for the two cases go only to Dominion's original complaint. But from the linked pages, one can also click the hyperlink to the right of "Docket Number" for a private recreation of the Docket Sheet as created and maintained by the official PACER service through which the U.S. Courts publish their filings online. It's the Docket Sheet which shows all the documents that've been filed, in chronological order; one can scroll to the most recent filings to confirm that yes, indeed, there are very recent filings comprising the most recent activities of the litigants, judge, and court staff — and the absence of a terminating filing, like a "Final Judgment of Dismissal," which is the document one would expect to see if the viral social media claim were true.

    Normally I have a strong preference for original source documents, which here would be the ones from PACER, over private-party summaries or recompilations taken from those original source documents. However, Court Listener website and the Free Law Project non-profit which sponsors it are doing a public service by saving members of the public the modest fees that PACER charges members of the public to search, access, and download its documents. The blue header at the top of each page — with the Docket Number, Document Number, date of filing, and page number — is applied when the document is digitally captured by and uploaded into PACER, so that header, and serves as an adequate confirmation for casual purposes that you're looking at a genuine document.

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      Here's what the Docket Report (aka Docket Sheet) for Dominion's case against Powell appears, as of this moment, on PACER for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. To save you the PACER fees, I've saved the current Docket Report — which would have been slightly different if generated yesterday, and is likely to be slightly different when generated again next week — to .pdf format and hosted it on my blog's server space, for your free and ready reference:

      https://www.beldar.org/2021/2021-06-08_Dkt_Report_for_US_Dominion_v_Powell.pdf

      If the case were no longer active — if it had, for example, already been dismissed — there would also be a notation to that effect that would appear near the top of the Docket Report beneath the filing date. One can also scroll down to the latest entry, from June 7, 2021: a "minute order" reflecting that on that date, Judge Carl J. Nichols, Jr. notified all parties that he'd scheduled a hearing on the case, to discuss not only the Defendants' pending motion to dismiss but several other still-pending motions and matters, "for 2:00 p.m. on June 24, 2021, in Courtroom 1."

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        Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

        (Even running this Docket Report cost me $1.00, but hey — you Dispatch comment readers are totally worth it.)

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          Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

          Further confirmation from PACER: The system can also generate a "Case Summary" for each pending lawsuit. Here's the one for US Dominion's lawsuit against Powell. You can see that there are separate lines for "Disposition:," "Terminated:," and "Reopened:" — the first of which would say "Dismissed," and the latter two of which would have a date next to them, if any those events had already taken place.

          Link: https://www.beldar.org/2021/2021-06-08_Case_Summary_for_US_Dominion_v_Powell.pdf

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  3. Raincheck

    Lying sacks of poop make claim…. This theater of the absurd is getting old. Can’t we send all these Trump folks to Elba or something?

    Is there a threshold in these fact checks for how widely disseminated a claim is? I’m just wondering. A lot of these claims I’ve never heard outside of the Dispatch debunking them.

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      Chris L

      I was gonna say, for a claim that is "viral" I sure haven't heard anything like this. I must be strategically or luckily avoiding those internet cesspools.

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      I'm guessing that The Dispatch is monitoring several fever swamps so that we don't have to, and also that its fact-checkers also get suggestions for fact-checking from Dispatch readers.

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    3. Seth

      It's probably a good sign that you don't get your information from the kooky corners of the world!

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    Cornelius O’Brien

    Would be helpful to know if there was a germ that led to this claim. For instance, is there a pending motion to dismiss either case?

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      See my comment elsewhere on this post with a link to the current Docket Report in the Powell case, which indeed confirms that yes, there is a motion to dismiss pending, and it — along with parallel motions to dismiss in US Dominion's cases against Giuliani and My Pillow, which are before this same judge — were yesterday all set for a combined hearing on June 24.

      My guess is that the mere filing of the motion, however, led the original source of the viral rumor to believe, wrongly, that the motion(s) to dismiss had already been granted.

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        Kevin M. James

        Wait wait wait...

        ...you're saying that people in the stop-the-steal fever swamp are misreading official documents that they don't remotely understand?

        Boy is that ever a first.

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        Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

        It's also possible someone saw — and drew the wrong conclusion from — the proposed order granting the Defendants' motion to dismiss that was attached to the motion, even though its title clearly says "[Proposed] Order" and there's no date or signature filled in.

        Link: https://www.beldar.org/2021/2021-03-22_Dkt%2322-1_Prop%27d_Order_Granting_Defs_M_to_Dismiss_in_US_Dominion_v_Powell.pdf

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          Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

          (PS: That proposed order is a shoddy piece of work. It recites that the motion to dismiss has been granted, but then doesn't actually order the dismissal sought by that order. Even when and if signed, this proposed order wouldn't terminate the case or be appealable. Experienced federal practitioners would look at this and shake their heads: It's a very, very bad sign when you can't articulate correctly what you're actually asking the judge to do.)

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      George.Skinner

      Probably a combination of wishful thinking and the fact that there hasn't been much news about the lawsuits as they work their way though the courts.

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      1. Richard Kennedy

        I kind of like this explanation. Attention is dormant. A ripe opportunity to stoke the doubt. Perfect.

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