Detroit News: “An attorney representing six Michigan Republicans who sought to overturn the state’s election says claims made in the effort by conservative lawyer Sidney Powell were ‘opinion’ in the eyes of the law. Attorney Stefanie Lambert Junttila laid out that argument in a filing Friday night as a group of Republican lawyers faces a push for sanctions in Michigan’s Eastern District federal court. ‘Indeed, based on case law, Ms. Powell’s statements are not legally considered ‘fact,’ Junttila wrote. ‘Rather, by placing her statements in the broad and specific context of political debate, there are legally considered ‘opinion.” Earlier this month, Michigan AG Dana Nessel asked a federal judge to consider Powell’s response to a $1.3 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems in deciding whether to sanction her for her lawsuit challenging Michigan’s election results.”

“Nessel’s office has sought $11,071 in attorneys’ fees to be awarded to the state as part of the sanctions push. In defending herself against the Dominion suit, Powell said ‘no reasonable person’ could conclude her statements about Dominion were ‘truly statements of fact.’ Powell also said it was the court’s responsibility, not hers, to investigate the truth of the statements. The statements, Nessel wrote previously, ‘go to the heart’ of the argument for sanctions against Powell, who was among the attorneys who represented Michigan Republicans who asked a judge to require that former President Donald Trump be named the state’s winner. The Republican’s case, which is known as King v. Whitmer, relied on conspiracy theories and discredited claims of wrongdoing. Trump lost Michigan to Democrat Joe Biden by 3 percentage points or 154,000 votes. Powell ‘all but admits that she and her co-counsel here have engaged in sanctionable conduct before this court,’ Nessel wrote earlier this month. ‘…That approach to litigation is sanctionable under any standard.'”