Trump allies urge judge to throw out Dominion defamation suits

A group of former President Trump’s allies urged a federal judge on Thursday to throw out a trio of Dominion Voting’s defamation suits over false claims of election fraud.

District Court Judge Carl Nichols appeared skeptical as he heard from attorneys for Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and MyPillow CEO Michael Lindell, who are all asking the court to dismiss the lawsuits from the voting systems company.

“Is it your view that if someone makes patently false statements in a lawsuit and then repeats them to the press that the statements to the press are not actionable?” Nichols, a Trump appointee, asked Powell’s attorney during a hearing on Thursday.

The attorney, Howard Kleinhendler, responded that the answer depends on a number of factors including whether the statement was made maliciously.

Dominion filed the lawsuits in the months after the 2020 election, accusing the Trump allies of defaming the company as part of their effort to shed doubt on the outcome with baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

The defendants have pushed varying responses to the lawsuits, with Powell’s attorneys arguing that the case against her should be dismissed because “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact.”

Giuliani’s legal team has moved to throw out Dominion’s suit on procedural issues.

And the attorneys for Lindell and MyPillow, which was also named as a defendant, argued that the lawsuit is a threat to free speech.

“We’re going to become a society where opinions will be shut down. That’s how important this motion is,” Andrew Parker, an attorney representing MyPillow, said during the hearing.

“The statements made by Mike Lindell are true,” Parker added. “He knows them to be true. He will prove that they are true, whether it be in this courtroom or not. It should not be in this courtroom, it should be in the marketplace of ideas.”

Dominion is seeking more than $1 billion in each of the three lawsuits.

While Nichols seemed largely skeptical of the defendants’ arguments on Thursday, it’s not entirely clear how he will rule on each of the motions to dismiss. If Dominion succeeds at this stage, it will still likely have to make its case in trial.