A lawyer defending Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in a defamation case filed by Dominion Voting Systems was arrested following a status hearing in Washington, D.C., where she admitted to sharing secret papers from the voting machine manufacturer with law enforcement.
A judge in Michigan, where Stefanie Lambert is also facing criminal charges for allegedly tampering with voting machines, has issued an arrest warrant for the attorney. She is being prosecuted as a fugitive from justice for failing to appear in court on March 7, according to Michigan police, who declined to clarify. The United States Marshals Service confirmed Lambert’s detention.
According to the Detroit News, her lawyer, Dan Hartman, attempted to get the warrant dropped, alleging that her absence was due to communication concerns with her old attorney.
Lambert was the subject of a status hearing in the civil lawsuit on Monday after Dominion’s lawyers sought that he be disqualified for allegedly violating a protection order.
Dominion filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump’s allies, including Byrne, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell, and the right-wing network OAN, alleging that they promoted false conspiracy theories claiming that the voting machine company helped rig the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden. The defendants deny any wrongdoing.
“There was no leak of data,” Lambert told ABC News in a statement. “I presented evidence of criminal activity to law enforcement. The Dominion file includes evidence of perjury by John Poulos, CEO of Dominion, as well as honest service fraud, wire fraud, and other offenses. I’m on my way back to Michigan, and I hope to see truth and openness for everyone.
Dominion declined to comment on Tuesday, referring ABC News to a company filing from last week.
“Having demonstrated that she has no qualms about violating this Court’s orders (or those of any other court), Dominion cannot be in the position of entrusting Lambert with highly sensitive, confidential information that impacts its business and the safety of its own employees and our nation’s election workers,” according to the filing.
During the hearing, Lambert stated that she sent over the confidential documents to law enforcement because she was concerned about fraud and illegal conduct.
“It’s very important that Congress and law enforcement investigate,” Lambert said in an interview.
“I believe Dominion has instituted fraud with this defamation suit,” she went on to say. “There are ongoing elections, primaries, and local elections.”
During the hearing, Dominion’s lawyers said Lambert and her client, Byrne, used the case documents “to spread lies and cause harm.”
According to one of Dominion’s lawyers, one of the law enforcement personnel who got the documents, some of which were classified, shared portions of the private Dominion communications on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.
“They took deliberate actions and have no intention of stopping,” Dominion’s counsel stated.
Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya chastised Lambert for failing to challenge the documents’ designation before disclosing the finding to law enforcement.
“You then gave… a tranche of documents that were clearly marked confidential to a third party,” the judge stated.
Upadhyaya decided to file the materials under seal and temporarily restrict Lambert’s access to the online document repository.
They also ordered Byrne to attend the next hearing.
Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year, alleging that the network broadcast false charges of electoral fraud. Fox News refuted the allegations, claiming the reporting was “newsworthy.”
Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation case against conservative network Newsmax over similar allegations is set to go to trial in late September 2024. Newsmax claims to have covered both sides of the 2020 election and has previously reversed some of its coverage as part of a settlement following a lawsuit by a Dominion employee in a separate matter.
