Law & Crime reports:
A Colorado appeals court has handed a former Dominion employee a significant win, allowing his 2020 election-related defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims to proceed to trial against former President Donald Trump’s campaign and “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell, among other individuals and entities.
In late December 2020, Dr. Eric Coomer, formerly the director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, filed a lawsuit in Denver County against Donald Trump’s campaign, two right-wing cable news networks, and a collection of Trump-allied election-deniers, claiming that the defendants conspired to defame him and intentionally inflicted “severe” emotional distress by falsely accusing him of being an “anonymous Antifa activist.”
From a 2023 Missouri Independent report:
Coomer found himself at the center of the conspiracy after a right-wing podcaster named Joseph Oltmann claimed without evidence that he’d infiltrated an antifa conference call in which a Dominion employee named Eric allegedly said: “Trump is not gonna win. I made f-ing sure of that.”
Oltmann’s theory was picked up by other right-wing media and shared on Twitter by one of Trump’s sons. It eventually found its way to the St. Louis-based the Gateway Pundit, which published a story that also included a 2016 video of Coomer presenting the security features of Dominion’s systems.
Coomer said the accusations led to death threats and harassment, driving him into hiding. So in December 2020 he filed a defamation lawsuit in Colorado against the Trump campaign, two of its lawyers and myriad right-wing media figures who helped spread the conspiracy — including the Gateway Pundit.
Newsmax settled with Coomer in 2021 for an undisclosed amount. Others named in the suit include Oltmann, OAN, Rudy Giuliani, Michelle Malkin, and Eric “Sucker Punch” Metaxas.
Oltmann appeared here last month when he called for executing Biden. In 2022, he claimed to be organizing “well-armed” action to install Kari Lake as Arizona governor.
In 2021, he called for executing the 19 US Senators who voted for a stop-gap bill to keep the government open.
‘Reasonable likelihood of success’: Appeals court refuses to spare ‘Kraken’ lawyer and Trump campaign from trial in ex-Dominion employee’s defamation lawsuit https://t.co/PbkxacqfXy
— Law & Crime (@lawcrimenews) April 12, 2024