Patrick Byrne (AP Photo/Jim Rassol), Stefanie Lambert during a July 2021 interview (Gateway Pundit/screengrab)
An attorney who worked as local counsel in the 2020 election-denying Michigan “Kraken” case only to be sanctioned, unsanctioned, and then criminally indicted for an alleged conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to and willfully damage voting machines is now representing Patrick Byrne in Dominion Voting Systems’ billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against the former Overstock CEO and several other Trumpworld figures. Judging by the latest filing in the case, Stefanie Lambert, aka Stefanie Lambert Junttila, already has a problem.
In Wednesday filing jointly updating U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols on the status of several issues identified by Dominion and the defendants, the very first issue raised was “an urgent matter regarding breach” of an existing amended protective order in the case surrounding discovery. The protective order in question, attached as Exhibit C, states that violations of the order by “releasing, leaking, or otherwise disclosing Confidential or Attorneys’ Eyes Only Discovery Material to persons or entities not entitled to such Discovery Material under this Order, the Court will have authority to impose sanctions under Rule 37(b)(2)(A)(i)-(vi).”
Exhibit D revealed even more. Dominion emailed Nichols on Tuesday to tell the judge that there has been a disclosure of confidential discovery, that Lambert was to blame, and that Byrne’s lawyer Robert Driscoll was the one who told Dominion about the breach, also by email. Driscoll’s March 12 email said, according to the filing, that Lambert appeared to share the discovery with Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf and filed discovery material in public as part of her bid to combat her criminal case:
It has recently come to our attention that Confidential Discovery Material produced by Dominion in this case has been disclosed in a public filing in Michigan by Stefanie Lambert. Ms. Lambert had access to Confidential Discovery Material as an attorney for Patrick Byrne who was assisting in this litigation. Prior to her gaining access to any Confidential Discovery Material, she signed an Undertaking in which she agreed to use all Discovery Material only as permitted by the Protective Order. Attached is a copy of her signed Undertaking.
Dominion’s Confidential Discovery Material appears to have been shared with a non-party (i.e., Sheriff Dar Leaf of Barry County, Michigan) by Stefanie Lambert and publicly disclosed by her as part of a filing she made in the criminal case styled People of the State of Michigan vs. Stefanie Lynn Lambert Junttila, which is currently pending before the Sixth Circuit Court in Oakland County, Michigan as Case Number 2023-285759-FH….
The docket in Byrne’s case shows that Lambert filed a notice of appearance as Byrne’s lawyer on March 12 and that Driscoll filed a notice of withdrawal the same day. Driscoll once represented Maria Butina, who was prosecuted and convicted in 2018 for conspiring to act in the U.S. as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia.
As it happens, Patrick Byrne resigned from Overstock in 2019 after his self-described “trysts” with Butina were revealed. The Byrne-Butina “affair” was referenced in a defamation lawsuit that Hunter Biden filed against Byrne in November.
According to Dominion’s email to the judge, Lambert “did affirmatively confirm” in an email after the “breach” that “it was her client, Mr. Byrne, who directed violation of the protective order.” The plaintiff concluded that Lambert’s “statements and conduct indicate every apparent intention of continuing to violate” the protective order.
The plaintiff asked for “an emergency hearing” or, in the alternative, “permission to raise the issue” at a March 18 hearing.
Read the filing and relevant exhibits here.
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