Stefanie Lambert, a pro-Trump lawyer facing felony charges in Michigan for improperly accessing voting equipment after the 2020 presidential election, has been disqualified from representing Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, in a defamation lawsuit brought against him by Dominion Voting Systems. Lambert admitted to releasing thousands of confidential discovery documents that she had agreed to keep private, leading to her disqualification from the case. U.S. District Court Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya stated that Lambert’s misconduct raised concerns that she became involved in the litigation for the purpose of gaining access to and publicly sharing Dominion’s protected discovery documents.
Following Lambert’s actions, the confidential documents that were supposed to remain private have now been shared widely in the public domain. Lambert’s lawyer, Daniel Hartman, said that she plans to appeal the decision, while Patrick Byrne expressed that the disqualification was a strategic mistake on their part. Lambert had previously acknowledged passing on records from Dominion Voting Systems to law enforcement, leading to her attachment of leaked emails to a filing in her own case in Michigan. Dominion filed a motion demanding Lambert be removed from the Byrne case for violating a protective order placed on the documents in the case.
In addition to the disqualification from the Dominion lawsuit, Lambert faces separate charges in Michigan for accessing voting machines in search of evidence to support conspiracy theories against Trump. She has been charged with multiple felonies, including unauthorized access to a computer and using a computer to commit a crime, after transmitting data from a local township’s poll book related to the 2020 election. Lambert has pleaded not guilty in both cases and unsuccessfully sued to overturn Trump’s loss in Michigan, where Biden won by nearly 155,000 votes confirmed by a GOP-led state Senate investigation in 2021.
Dominion Voting Systems has filed defamation lawsuits against prominent election deniers, including Patrick Byrne, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, and attorney Sidney Powell, who spread conspiracy theories blaming its election equipment for Trump’s loss. Lambert’s disqualification from the Byrne case is part of a broader legal battle between Dominion and individuals and media organizations that propagated false claims of election fraud in connection with the 2020 presidential election. Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion for $787 million last year, highlighting the financial consequences of spreading false information about the election. The ongoing legal battles underscore the efforts to hold individuals and organizations accountable for perpetuating baseless claims about the integrity of the election process.
