A couple of sample headlines:
Sidney Powell's legal defense: 'Reasonable people' wouldn't believe her election fraud claims
But that's not what the actual stories say.
What the actual stories say is that her attorneys argued in court that no reasonable people would take her claims as claims of fact, rather than as her personal opinions.
She (or her attorneys) aren't saying that "reasonable people" wouldn't believe her claims. They're saying that that "reasonable people" would understand her as expressing an opinion, then go look things over and make up their own minds.
Why are they saying that? Because they're trying to thread the libel/defamation needle.
Disclaimer: I am not an attorney. I'm just giving you my basic understanding of US libel/slander/defamation law here.
If I say that you're a bad person, that's just my opinion and not actionable.
If I say that on March 23, 2021, you robbed a liquor store, that's a claim of fact which, if untrue, is actionable.
Based on my limited knowledge of Powell's theatrics, I doubt this defense will fly. My recollection is that she made very specific claims regarding Dominion that a "reasonable person" would regard as claims of objective fact, not just personal opinions.
The real takeaway from the story is that instead of defending those factual claims as true and attempting to prove them via the discovery process, she's trying to retroactively turn them into mere opinions to save her own ass. Which makes her look plenty bad. So why did CNN and NBC (and probably others) feel a need to lie in the headlines about the actual content of the story?
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