'A high bar': Legal analysis explains judge’s reason for booting MAGA lawyer from defamation case

On Tuesday, August 13, Judge Moxila Upadhyaya did something that is quite rare for someone in his position: He removed a defendant's lawyer from a civil defamation case.

The lawyer was Stefanie Lambert, who has been defending former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in a civil defamation lawsuit initiated by Dominion Voting Systems. Lambert and Byrne are both far-right MAGA Republicans who falsely claimed that Dominion's voting equipment was used to help now-President Joe Biden steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump — a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

In an August 14 column, MSNBC legal analyst Jordan Rubin lays out some reasons why Upadhyaya felt the need to take such drastic action.

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"It's a high bar to disqualify a lawyer from representing a client," Rubin emphasizes. "But Lambert cleared it for reasons explained by U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya. Indeed, the judge's opinion Tuesday cited 'at least five reasons that illustrate why Lambert's conduct meets the high bar for disqualification.'"

Upadhyaya, Rubin observes, lambasted Lambert for everything from "intentional" breach of a protective order to "repeatedly" violating court orders.

"Upadhyaya noted that Lambert had disclosed confidential Dominion case material in one of her own criminal cases and that she shared documents with a sheriff…. who also publicly spread the information," Rubin explains. "'This is not a case of an inadvertent breach or good faith disclosure,' the judge wrote, calling it 'unfathomable for Lambert to believe she could do whatever she wanted with Dominion's Litigation Documents.'"

Rubin adds that Upadhyaya "also said that Byrne himself violated the protective order and that Dominion might seek sanctions against him."

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"But Byrne wasn't the subject of this opinion," Rubin points out. "Lambert was, in the latest example of Donald Trump-aligned lawyers facing consequences for going off the rails in the face of Trump's 2020 election loss — some of whom might not be lawyers anymore when all is said and done."

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Jordan Rubin's full MSNBC column is available at this link.