FILE – Sidney Powell, an attorney for former President Donald Trump, leaves the federal court in Washington, June 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
So-called “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell has reached a settlement with a former Dominion Voting Systems employee who sued her for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
In a series of notices filed with the Colorado Supreme Court, Colorado Court of Appeals, and Denver District Court on Monday, Powell, her eponymous law firm, and a nonprofit she runs agreed to settle the claims against her in the lawsuit filed by Dr. Eric Coomer, Ph.D.
The plaintiff is formerly the director of product strategy and security for Dominion. According to his lawsuit, during the 2020 election, he “worked with elections officials — Republican, Democratic, and independent — across the country to make sure the process was safe.”
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, however, Coomer became one of many scapegoats cited and called out by name by conservative cable news networks and other assorted election conspiracy theorists within the 45th president’s orbit.
During a Nov. 19, 2020, press conference, Rudy Giuliani asked Powell to discuss what he termed “another totally outrageous situation.”
Here’s what the Texas-based attorney said:
[O]ne of the Smartmatic patent holders, Eric Coomer I believe his name is, is on the web as being recorded in a conversation with Antifa members, saying that he had the election rigged for Mr. Biden. Nothing to worry about here. And he was going to — they were going to “F” Trump. His social media is filled with hatred for the President, and for the United States of America as a whole …
The very next day, Powell addressed Coomer again.
Here’s what she told Newsmax’s Howie Carr:
Carr: Let me ask you about this guy Eric Coomer. He works for Dominion … He’s the one who was allegedly … on a conference call or something, a Zoom with Antifa. And he said, supposedly, don’t worry about Trump, I’ve already made sure he’s going to lose the election. Is that true, for starters?
Powell: Yes.
Carr: It’s true. You have that?
Powell: It’s true. We have an affidavit to that effect and I think we have a copy of the call.
Later that same day, here’s what Powell told Fox News: “We’ve got Eric Coomer … admitting on tape that he rigged the election for Biden and hated Trump. We’ve got their social media posts. We’ve got all kinds of evidence that is mathematically irrefutable.”
In the days following Trump’s loss, conservative media outlets developed an obsessive focus on voting machine vendors. Conservative Daily podcast co-host Joseph Oltmann began to single out Coomer by name, according to a court of appeals ruling — even going so far as to spell Coomer’s last name for listeners.
The conservative echo chamber boomed and thrummed in the days that followed. Soon enough, claims that Coomer took part in a September 2020 “Antifa Conference Call” made their way into a Trump campaign memo. That internal document took stock of an “internet rumor that [Coomer] has ties to Antifa” but concluded “there is no evidence that Eric Coomer is a supporter of Antifa in any way.”
Quality control over messaging did not prevail, however, and by late November 2020, both Trump and his adult son, Eric Trump, had shared right-wing media accounts that repeated the allegations.
Coomer has consistently maintained those claims are false.
In December 2020, Coomer sued Trump’s campaign, Powell, Oltmann, Michelle Malkin, The Gateway Pundit and others.
Newsmax was also originally named in the defamation lawsuit. That network eventually settled and apologized to Coomer in April 2021.
In April, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the lawsuit on most grounds — while tossing Coomer’s civil conspiracy claim.
Following that appellate court ruling in their favor, Coomer’s attorneys told Law&Crime they were happy about the “opportunity to bring this case to trial after nearly three and a half years.”
Now, in light of Powell’s decision to settle, they’ll be hashing things out before Denver jurors with one less defendant.
Law&Crime reached out to Powell for comment on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming at time of publication.
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