Kraken Crazytimes Continue In Dominion Defamation Suit

Is it bad when your lawyer gets arrested in the courtroom?

On Monday, “Big Lie” lawyer Stefanie Lambert Juntilla was arrested in the courtroom by US marshals after a hearing in the Dominion defamation suit against her fellow election deniers.

The Dominion litigation has been an absolute shitshow, and Lambert’s arrest wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened there this week. Indeed, her client Patrick Byrne told the AP, “I respect her even more, and she can raise her rate to me.” Which is generous! And also … highly optimistic that Lambert will be allowed to remain on the case.

Welcome to Crazytown

When Dominion Voting Systems sued Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, and Patrick Byrne for defamation, they knew they were in for a wild ride. But the voting machine company probably did not anticipate that the nuttiest person involved would be opposing counsel. And yet, before she even entered her appearance on behalf of former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, attorney Stefanie Lambert Juntilla made her presence known.

In 2021, Lambert served as a member of Powell’s Kraken team, participating in the Michigan tentacle of the election litigation seeking to overturn Biden’s victory. That effort did not lead to Trump receiving the state’s 15 electoral votes, but it did get several lawyers sanctioned, including Powell and Lambert. Lambert’s punishment was later reversed by the Sixth Circuit because she had joined the case too late, but it turns out her legal problems were just beginning.

In August, a special prosecutor in Michigan charged Lambert with four felonies in relation to her efforts to tamper with voting equipment. And last week she earned herself a bench warrant after repeatedly refusing to provide fingerprints and DNA to law enforcement. Naturally Byrne was anxious to hire her to represent him in the Dominion case in Washington, DC.

For his part, Byrne departed as CEO of his company after a long run of erratic behavior culminating in a romantic affair with Russian spy Maria Butina. After the 2020 election, he became a full time election denier, bankrolling efforts to prove that voting machines were hacked to shift votes from Trump to Biden.

There’s Been Some Spillage

Initially, Byrne retained competent counsel from the DC firm McGlinchey Stafford, including Robert Driscoll, who previously represented Butina herself. But on March 11, Driscoll sent an email to Dominion’s lawyers admitting that confidential discovery materials from the defamation suit had somehow escaped and made their way into a public filing in Lambert’s 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.

Whoopsie doodle!

The next day, Driscoll and his fellow normie lawyers withdrew from the case, and Lambert took over.

Dominion’s counsel promptly flipped their shit, firing off an emergency motion to disqualify Lambert and stop her putting any more protected discovery online.

“Prior to three days ago, Lambert was not an attorney of record in this case and Dominion had no knowledge that she was working with Byrne,” they wrote. Noting Lambert’s “well-documented history of violating court orders and improperly accessing voting information,” they argued that the attorney “never should have been entrusted with these documents in the first instance—and particularly not without notice to Dominion and this Court.”

Lambert replied in an email that there was evidence of “criminal acts contained in discovery.”

“If you were aware of the criminal acts, I will need to address fraud on the court and potentially accessory after the fact with threats of violating a protective order that does not extend to criminal acts committed by your client,” she nattered on.

Byrne then confirmed on social media that he’d authorized the breach of the protective order.

Indeed, there was “no severed head in the discovery box.” There were just emails between programmers in the US, Canada, and Serbia discussing coding issues and updates to voting machines, from which Lambert, her client, and the dead enders who follow them inferred that Dominion had used foreign actors to steal the election.

Or as the company put it, “Best Dominion can tell, Byrne and Lambert’s xenophobic conclusion is that any email from non-US-based Dominion personnel is conclusive evidence of criminal activity.” They also pointed out that the protective order governing discovery in this case specifically allows the court to impose sanctions, “If a Party violates this 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.”

But Stephanie Lambert does not lack for chutzpah. So she turned around filed a response that accused Dominion’s lawyers of …

… wait for it …

… violating the protective order by writing about it in a public document.

Alternatively, she suggests that the docs she published in her own criminal case were not confidential, even though they were internal Dominion emails prominently labeled “confidential.” Or possibly they were evidence of crimes and the crime-protective order exception applies. (Note: The crime-protective order exception does not exist. That’s just some BS this nutter made up.)

However batshit you think this motion is, I promise you, it’s worse.

This [motion to disqualify] is indeed a “tactical” effort to stifle the truth and to prevent undersigned counsel who has introduced and presented corroborating expert analysis of the deficiencies in Dominion voting systems, and now has fulfilled her ethical duty to report the discovery of potential criminal violations to law enforcement. Dominion wants to disqualify undersigned because of her combined knowledge and the information she possesses from litigating cases in multiple jurisdictions, and with her expertise and knowledge, including multiple expert analyses of the deficiencies in Dominion voting systems’ product, and to prevent her from using her expertise and knowledge to defend Mr. Byrne, who has a right to retain and have qualified counsel defend him

“These email communications to and from Serbian foreign nationals are evidence of criminal violations, and further support charges of, inter alia, perjury, foreign interference in a U.S. election, honest services fraud, and wire fraud,” Lambert went on, adding, “Pursuant to legal obligations, undersigned counsel released these emails to law enforcement.”

And by “law enforcement,” she means this nutbag named Dar Leaf, the self-described “constitutional sheriff” of Barry County, Michigan (pop. 63,000), who has zero authority over any entity in this case, but who does spend a lot of time flogging election conspiracies.

Lambert doesn’t say why she failed to flag these supposed crimes to federal law enforcement officials, or even to Judge Carl Nichols, who is presiding over this circus. Nor does she explain why she was entitled to expropriate discovery materials from her client’s civil suit for her own criminal filings. There’s also a striking dearth of caselaw or statutes cited. But Lambert is unblinkingly certain that she was entitled to spill the beans here.

“The fact that the voting systems and machines have the capacity to connect to the internet and the software was created and engineered by foreign nationals acting in concert with and for Dominion is sufficient in itself to lift the protective order to allow disclosure of these email communications,” she huffed.

Nope Nope Nope

Sadly, this logic failed persuade the court. CNN reports that, after a testy hearing, Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya locked Lambert out of the database containing Dominion’s discovery data “to prevent any future dissemination.”

“I will deal with the why later – but for now, I need to preserve the status quo,” she said.

After the hearing, the judge told Lambert to stay behind. According to CNN, “The other attorneys left the courtroom, and two federal marshals then went inside and locked the doors. Lambert was never seen exiting the courtroom.”

The marshals later confirmed that they’d arrested the attorney on the outstanding Michigan warrant. Yesterday she bonded out on $10,000 and a promise to turn herself in as soon as she gets back to Michigan after her lawyer explained that this was all just a big misunderstanding. You see, Your Honor, his client, who is a member of the bar, missed two court appearances accidentally.

All of which can mean only one thing … Mike Lindell is going to be forced to do something absolutely FUCKBONKERS to regain his position at the top of Crazy Mountain. He already tried to get the Supreme Court to say that he didn’t have to comply with discovery while he was mounting a disallowed interlocutory appeal of a denial of his motion to dismiss. But now he’s been out-freaked by that red-haired resale weirdo.

Time to up your game, Pillow Man! We know you have it in you.

[US Dominion Inc. v. Byrne, Docket via Court Listener]