A lawyer accused of illegally accessing voting machines in Michigan after the 2020 election acknowledged in a lawsuit Monday that she distributed numerous confidential emails from a voting machine company in a separate case.
In a filing in federal court in Washington, DC, attorney Stefanie Lambert acknowledged that Dominion Voting Systems’ data had been passed on to “law enforcement.” She then attached an affidavit containing some of the leaked emails and signed by Dar Leaf, a sheriff in northern Michigan who has investigated false claims of widespread election fraud dating back to the 2020 election, to a file in her own business in Michigan. The rest of the documents were posted to an account under Leaf’s name on X, the social platform formally known as Twitter.
Lambert obtained the confidential data shortly after joining the legal team of a prominent election denier. Dominion is suing for defamation, court records show. She previously unsuccessfully sued to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss and is facing an injunction in Michigan after missing a March 7 hearing in the voting machine case there. Leaf did not respond to requests for comment.
Lambert had just joined Dominion’s defamation lawsuit to represent Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com who has become a major backer of election conspiracy theories. She claimed that the Dominion documents obtained during the discovery were evidence of “crimes” and should be made public.
Byrne wrote on If she found a severed head in the discovery box, she also had a duty to report it to the police.”
Dominion filed a motion Friday seeking Lambert’s removal from the Byrne case for violating a protective order that U.S. District Court Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya placed on documents in the case. The report said Lambert’s revelation had led to a new round of threats against the company, which has been at the center of extensive conspiracy theories about Trump’s loss.
“These actions should shock the conscience,” Dominion wrote in its motion to disqualify Lambert. “They reflect a total disregard for the orders of this Court, not to mention the safety of Dominion employees.”
Upadhyaya said at a hearing Monday that she had scheduled another one to determine whether sanctions against Lambert or removing her from the case were appropriate.
Dominion has filed several defamation lawsuits against those spreading conspiracy theories and blaming election equipment for Trump’s 2020 loss. Fox News settled the most prominent of these cases last year for $787 million.
Dominion’s lawsuit against Byrne is one of several the company has filed against prominent election deniers, including MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and attorney Sidney Powell.
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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.