Attorney Sidney Powell, known for filing post-2020 election lawsuits, secured a victory in Texas as an appeals court determined that the Texas bar failed to demonstrate her involvement in misconduct or fraud.
On Wednesday, a panel of judges at the Fifth District of Texas Court of Appeals in Dallas declared that the state bar’s arguments were unfounded and lacked evidence. They criticized state bar prosecutors for using a “scattershot” approach in the case, which accused Ms. Powell of filing baseless lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results in battleground states.
“The Bar employed a ‘scattershot’ approach to the case, which left this court and the trial court ‘with the task of sorting through the argument to determine what issue ha[d] actually been raised,’” Justice Dennise Garcia wrote in the court’s ruling. “Having done so, the absence of competent summary judgment compels our conclusion that the Bar failed to meet its summary judgment burden.”
In a previous ruling last year, another court sided with Ms. Powell, identifying “numerous defects” in the evidence presented by the State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline. The court further noted the bar’s inability to provide evidence supporting claims that she filed frivolous lawsuits.
“Under these circumstances and on this record, we conclude the trial court did not err in granting Powell’s no-evidence motion for summary judgment,” the appeals court wrote.
The State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline has not released a statement regarding the case. A spokesperson for the Texas State Bar informed Reuters that the commission plans to convene to decide its next course of action but refrained from providing additional comments.
“The Dallas Court of Appeals has affirmed the Texas state court’s dismissal of the Texas Bar’s case against Powell. After three years of litigation, the Court of Appeals held the Bar had no evidence Powell violated any disciplinary rule in filing four federal lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election,” she said in a statement this week after the court’s decision.
In court papers filed with the appeals court, Ms. Powell disputed the bar’s allegations that she provided altered evidence in her legal filings. She said the documents were provided by other attorneys involved in the case.
The court appeared to agree with her arguments. “Regardless of whether the challenged conduct must be knowing, intentional, or otherwise, a question we need not resolve here, it is axiomatic that dishonesty involves some conscious perversion of truth,” the judge wrote Wednesday.
Share your thoughts by scrolling down to leave a comment.
