Stefanie Lambert, a lawyer who has crusaded to try to prove Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Michigan, was arrested in federal court and released on bond after refusing to comply with court orders in a separate Michigan case alleging she tampered with voting machines after the 2020 election.
During her arraignment on Tuesday, a judge released her on a $10,000 unsecured bond. Lambert has refused to submit fingerprints in the Michigan case accusing her and two other state Republicans of illegally breaching Michigan voting machines.
Lambert is currently representing the former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne, who has been fighting a defamation case for three years filed by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion accuses Byrne of spreading the lie that the 2020 election was stolen with the help of its voting machines.
When US marshals apprehended her in Washington on Monday, Lambert was in court for a hearing over possible sanctions for handing over confidential documents from Dominion to Dar Leaf, a Michigan sheriff and prominent elections conspiracy theorist.
Leaf, of Barry county, has spent the last four years doubling down on efforts to prove Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in Michigan, and is a leader in the radical rightwing “constitutional sheriffs” movement, which claims that sheriffs have the sole and ultimate authority in their jurisdiction.
A new and unverified account on X called “Sheriff Dar Leaf” on Sunday posted more than 2,000 pages of the confidential Dominion documents.
Dominion has asked a US judge to disqualify Lambert from the case, arguing that the release of documents spurred harassment against Dominion employees.
Byrne played a role in Trump’s inner circle in the days following the 2020 election, spreading false claims of rampant voter fraud and helping fund the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the election. Dominion settled a similar defamation case with Fox News for $787.4m last year.
In a 2021 filing, Byrne defended his role in Trump’s 2020 big lie, arguing that he is “a philosopher with post-graduate and doctoral degrees from prestigious universities, a successful CEO, public intellectual, and student of American history”, and that his findings as “an investigative and citizen journalist” were protected by the first amendment.
Lambert in court agreed to return promptly to Michigan and turn herself in.
