Sidney Powell (left)(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File); Dr. Eric Coomer (center) pictured during an interview with 9News (WUSA/screengrab), (right) Donald Trump (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
A Colorado appeals court handed a former Dominion employee a significant win on Thursday, 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, one month after the election and a matter of days before Jan. 6, 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” hell-bent on ensuring the former president was “not going to win” the election.
Coomer said he was falsely branded a “traitor” and subjected to “multiple credible death threats” based on a “fabricated” conspiracy that he worked in cahoots with “Antifa activists” so Joe Biden would become the next president of the United States.
“Dr. Coomer worked with elections officials—Republican, Democratic, and independent—across the country to make sure the process was safe,” the suit said, stating that all of the allegations against Coomer, including the one accusing him of participating in a September 2020 “Antifa Conference Call,” were completely false, harmed his reputation, and forced him to “sever ties with friends and family members in order to stay in seclusion.”
On Thursday, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in Coomer’s favor except on his civil conspiracy claim.
The court found Coomer “established a reasonable likelihood of success on his claims for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress arising out of statements by various defendants,” namely Sidney Powell and her non-profit Defending the Republic, Inc., Conservative Daily podcast co-host Joseph Oltmann, Michelle Malkin, The Gateway Pundit and its founder Jim Hoft, and radio host Eric Metaxas.
“The division concludes that, accepting the plaintiff’s evidence as true, the plaintiff has shown a reasonable likelihood that each defendant made these statements, that the statements were false, and that the defendants made them with actual malice,” the court said, before tossing Coomer’s civil conspiracy allegation. “The division concludes that the plaintiff has not established a reasonable likelihood of success on his conspiracy claim because the plaintiff presented no evidence of an agreement to defame him.”
Coomer’s appellate lawyer Zach Bowman, of the Texas law firm Cain & Skarnulis PLLC, said he was “pleased” by the ruling, as it means there will be an “opportunity to bring this case to trial after nearly three and a half years.”
“The court of appeals’ ruling affirms that Dr. Coomer’s claims against the Trump Campaign, Sidney Powell, and other defendants have merit and that our client deserves his long-awaited day in court,” Bowman said in a statement to Law&Crime. “We are eager to get this case back to the trial court and before a Denver jury.”
Read the appellate ruling here.
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