Left: A Dominion Voting ballot scanner at a polling location at an elementary school in Gwinnett County, Ga., outside of Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2021 (AP Photo/Ben Gray, File). Right: Stefanie Lambert (Oakland County Sheriff’s Office).
Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems say that so-called “Kraken” attorney Stefanie Lambert — who has admitted to sharing discovery with a Michigan sheriff under the guise of reporting “criminal activity” to law enforcement — continues to defy court orders to hand over documents she has owed since August, and is incapable of following even “basic” rules.
Lambert — who was removed from her role representing ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in Dominion’s defamation case against him over the summer after being charged with voter machine tampering — has positioned herself as an expert litigator, but her actions have proved otherwise, the Dominion lawyers said.
“Ms. Lambert has described herself as the ‘foremost leading expert advocate and attorney in the country,”” Dominion attorney Davida Brook wrote in a Nov. 21 filing. “Such a lawyer should know how to follow basic rules of court. And of course, this particular Court has already repeatedly reminded both Ms. Lambert and Mr. Byrne of the importance of doing that.”
The filing from Dominion comes after Lambert failed to oppose the voting company’s Nov. 1 motion asking U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, to set a deadline by which Lambert and Byrne must hand over affidavits related to a magistrate’s Aug. 13 order disqualifying Lambert from the case. That ruling came after Lambert was charged with four felonies related to alleged voter machine tampering in her home state of Michigan in 2020.
“Dominion’s motion is now unopposed and thus may be treated as conceded,” the Nov. 21 filing says — although it notes that Lambert and Byrne did manage to file an entirely separate motion in the case. That Nov. 15 motion, in which Lambert asks Nichols to undo U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya’s disqualification ruling, “was procedurally improper and should be denied,” the Dominion lawyers argue.
Lambert, a pro-Trump attorney who participated in the failed 2020 election-denying Michigan “Kraken” lawsuit, was disqualified from the Dominion case after Upadhyaya ruled that Lambert had likely taken on the defamation suit for the “improper purposes” of accessing and leaking up to three million documents from discovery, according to the judge.
“[Lambert and Byrne] unilaterally decided to disclose thousands, if not millions, of Dominion’s Litigation Documents to third parties and then promoted the public dissemination of the documents through those third parties in violation of court orders and without justification,” Upadhyaya said in the Aug. 13 ruling.
Upadhyaya also said Lambert and Byrne “violated” the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct and the court’s data protection order, with the magistrate judge demanding that they submit “sworn affidavits by no later than August 20” explaining how and when the document breach occurred. In the affidavits, Upadhyaya asked that Lambert and Byrne include “an accounting attesting to whom Lambert and/or Byrne leaked, released, or otherwise disclosed documents or information protected by the Protective Order.” She also requested information be listed that may have been brought up in court filings for other ongoing cases, such as the Colorado 2020 election-related criminal trial of ex-Mesa County clerk Tina Peters, who reportedly tried obtaining discovery information from the Dominion case through a subpoena.
Dominion’s lawyers say they’ve been waiting for months on the affidavits from Lambert and Byrne after Upadhyaya first requested them on Aug. 13. They pointed out in the Nov. 21 filing that with a discovery cutoff date of Dec. 13, the voting machine company could face “significant” prejudice if they don’t have the affidavits in hand before Byrne’s deposition, scheduled for Dec. 5.
“[A]t present, Dominion does not have them, and Mr. Byrne and Ms. Lambert are refusing to provide them,” the Dominion filing says.
In Michigan, Lambert is accused of scheming with others to illegally obtain sensitive voting equipment from counties throughout the Great Lakes State after the 2020 election in a bid to prove that they were faulty or fraudulent. Tabulators were allegedly obtained and tampered with from jurisdictions in Barry County, Missaukee County, Roscommon County and Genesee County. The judge overseeing Lambert’s case pushed back her jury trial start date from October to December after her attorney accused prosecutors of withholding evidence.
That evidence, according to Michigan Public Radio, was a 2021 letter from Michigan’s elections director, Jonathan Brater, which outlines who is allowed to access voting equipment. The letter is publicly available, per MPRN.
In her Nov. 15 motion to Nichols, Lambert argued that Upadhyaya had “erred in concluding” that she had made statements contrary to the protective order — and that Lambert’s exoneration in the Michigan case was all but certain
“Dr. Byrne’s counsel has received new exculpatory evidence in her criminal matter in Michigan, and the fact that Plaintiff Dominion has wrongfully referred to the criminal matter in discrediting Dr. Bryne’s counsel requires context of which Dr. Byrne and counsel became aware of on Sunday, October 20,” Lambert’s motion says.
Attempts by Law&Crime to reach Lambert, Byrne and Dominion for comment have been unsuccessful.
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