4 ms·

This is a bit of a tangent from the actual article we're nominally discussing, of course, but... > Further, the claims in that article were odd and don’t seem

by kemayo 6y ago

This is a bit of a tangent from the actual article we're nominally discussing, of course, but... > Further, the claims in that article were odd and don’t seem to match the filing Sydney Powell actually made So, the bit of the article I can read says "Attorneys for Sidney Powell are asking a federal judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed against her, claiming that “no reasonable person” thought the pro-Trump lawyer’s statements about the 2020 election results were factual." This is directly referring to a claim in the document Powell's lawyers filed. If you scroll through to page 32 of the PDF you linked, you'll find this: "Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support Defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process." It's literally arguing that "no reasonable person" would ever believe that anything anyone says about an upcoming court case is meant as a fact. It's an argument that would mean it's absolutely impossible to defame someone who's in any way related to a person you're suing, no matter how meritless that lawsuit might be. (Particularly, it argues, if your lawsuit is related to politics.)

jcranmer 6y ago
What Sidney Powell is trying to do in the proceedings is to argue that the allegedly defamatory statements are part of legal proceedings. Legal pleadings are by definition protected speech and cannot be defamatory. The problem she faces is that, while the lawsuits themselves are protected, she held several press conferences and made the same speech in other venues where it is not so protected. Furthermore, by making essentially the same speech in legal pleadings, portraying the speech as opinion or hyperbole and not factual statements (the usual defense in a defamation lawsuit) would mean admitting to committing sanctionable offenses in filing those pleadings. But they're trying to still play that defense as well, which leads to the awkward conclusion "it's so outlandlishly false that no one would believe it to be fact, merely a fact we're arguing is true in a court case," which kind of makes it more likely they get slapped both with the sanctions for making false statements before the court and being the rare defendant to lose a defamation suit.

by kemayo 6y ago

jcranmer 6y ago

What Sidney Powell is trying to do in the proceedings is to argue that the allegedly defamatory statements are part of legal proceedings. Legal pleadings are by definition protected speech and cannot be defamatory. The problem she faces is that, while the lawsuits themselves are protected, she held several press conferences and made the same speech in other venues where it is not so protected. Furthermore, by making essentially the same speech in legal pleadings, portraying the speech as opinion or hyperbole and not factual statements (the usual defense in a defamation lawsuit) would mean admitting to committing sanctionable offenses in filing those pleadings. But they're trying to still play that defense as well, which leads to the awkward conclusion "it's so outlandlishly false that no one would believe it to be fact, merely a fact we're arguing is true in a court case," which kind of makes it more likely they get slapped both with the sanctions for making false statements before the court and being the rare defendant to lose a defamation suit.