I’m upset about this on two levels.
A state district judge dismissed a Texas state bar disciplinary case against Dallas attorney Sidney Powell for her role in disputing the 2020 election results as a lawyer for former President Donald Trump.
The State Bar of Texas filed a petition last March accusing Powell of professional misconduct by filing “frivolous” voter fraud lawsuits in four states, making false statements to a court and knowingly presenting false evidence. Powell filed lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona accusing election companies of vote manipulation.
The petition asked the court to decide the appropriate sanction, which could have ranged from reprimand to disbarment.
In the decision signed Wednesday, Andrea Bouressa, a Collin County district judge who heard the case filed in Dallas County, found “defects” with filings from Powell’s accuser, the Commission for Lawyer Discipline.
The commission, she ruled, mislabeled exhibits of evidence and failed to correct the errors when pointed out. That left two exhibits and those failed to meet the burden of the case, the judge said in granting Powell’s motion to dismiss the complaint.
[…]
Although the Texas court handed Powell a victory, her reputation continues to take a beating as evidence emerges in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News from Dominion Voting Systems.
Last week, the company revealed that Powell’s “evidence” for allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election stemmed from a bizarre email by an unidentified author who attributed her insight to an ability to “time travel in a semi-conscious state.”
Dominion said Fox executives harmed its business by knowingly allowing hosts and guests to voice baseless and false assertions linking it to nonexistent vote fraud.
In depositions, Fox host Maria Bartiromo called the email that Powell had provided “nonsense,” according to Dominion’s filing.
And David Clark, then Fox’s senior executive over weekend shows, said that — had he known that Powell’s “crazy” theories were based on that email — he “would not have allowed that claim to be aired.”
See here for the background, and be sure to read the judge’s decision, it’s short and to the point. I’m upset that Powell won’t be sanctioned for all the obvious reasons – it really seems impossible to hold terrible people to account for their terrible actions these days – but if the weight of the evidence did not support a finding of guilt, then so be it. What really chaps me is that the State Bar appears to have completely bungled this, by not including all the evidence they said they had, mislabeling the evidence they did include, and not taking the opportunity to fix their clearly flawed exhibits when given the chance. I’m trying to think of a reason for this that isn’t rank incompetence on their part, and I’m having a hard time doing so. Whatever the reason was, we the people deserved a hell of a lot better than this. Any remaining optimism I may have had for their case against Ken Paxton took a beating with this outcome. Reuters and Forbes have more.
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