Lawyer defending ex-CEO of Overstock arrested after she is no-show on voting-machine-possession charge
A Michigan lawyer was arrested in Washington, D.C., on Monday for failing to appear for a March 7 hearing on charges that she possessed and damaged a voting machine. (Image from Shutterstock)
A Michigan lawyer was arrested in Washington, D.C., on Monday for failing to appear for a March 7 hearing on charges that she possessed and damaged a voting machine.
Stefanie Lambert of Detroit was arrested at the end of a hearing in a Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against her client Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock, an online retailer. She was released Tuesday on a $10,000 unsecured bond.
The Detroit News, Reuters and Law360 have coverage.
The hearing focused partly on Dominion’s claim that Lambert should be disqualified as Byrne’s counsel for allegedly leaking the company’s documents in violation of a protective order.
Before the hearing, Lambert said in a court filing the documents could be disclosed to law enforcement because they allegedly showed evidence that Dominion had committed crimes, including “perjury, foreign interference in a U.S. election, honest services fraud and wire fraud,” according to Reuters and the court filing.
The court filing said Dominion had directed its employees in Serbia to remotely access voting machines in November 2020 while states were still counting votes.
An account on X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming to belong to Barry County, Michigan, Sheriff Dar Leaf released more than 2,100 pages of emails from Dominion employees, according to the Detroit News.
In court, U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya of the District of Columbia asked Lambert why she gave the documents to law enforcement without first seeking to have them unsealed, according to the Detroit News.
“If I had a literally dead body,” Lambert said, “I wouldn’t bring it to the court first and ask the court what to do with it.”
On Tuesday, Upadhyaya issued an order for Byrne and Lambert to “immediately desist” from sharing discovery material while she considers Dominion’s motion to disqualify Lambert.
The order also says Lambert should take down Dominion litigation documents filed on the public court docket in the criminal case.
