Patrick Byrne, the Overstock.com weirdo who backed Trump’s “Cease the Steal” effort in 2020, outcrazied a federal decide in California this week, narrowly escaping a default judgment within the defamation go well with introduced by Hunter Biden.
The litigation is a Mad Libs acid journey freakshow. The precipitating occasion was a rambling interview Byrne gave for the inaugural version of one thing known as Capitol Times Magazine through which he accused Joe and Hunter Biden of a bribery scheme involving Iranian nukes.
5 months later, Hunter Biden sued Byrne for defamation within the Central District of California. The criticism was a part of a spate of litigation the previous president’s son filed, together with lawsuits in opposition to Rudy Giuliani, a former Trump White Home aide turned anti-Biden content material creator, and the IRS. Most of these fits have dried up, however the case in opposition to Byrne persists — doubtless as a result of, not like his erstwhile pal Rudy, Byrne remains to be solvent.
The case proceeded in considerably chaotic trend. Byrne claimed to be hiding from Venezuelan assassins in Dubai and refused to return to the US to be deposed. However lastly after a number of postponements and motions for sanctions, the day of trial arrived on Tuesday. Sixty jurors have been assembled for voir dire. After which …
Decide Stephen Wilson has been on the bench since 1985. In Los Angeles. This man has seen some shit. And but confronted with the Byrne’s peculiar model of chaos, he all however shorted out.
On Tuesday morning, Byrne was not within the courtroom, and neither was his lawyer, Michael Murphy. As a substitute, three different legal professionals have been on the desk. Native counsel included Eric Neff, a former LA County prosecutor forced out after submitting a bogus election fraud case, and Tom Yu, whose practice seems to consist totally of defending cops in civil and prison actions. The brand new lead lawyer was one Stefanie Lambert, acquainted to readers of this web site as Byrne’s lawyer within the defamation case introduced in DC by Dominion Voting Programs. In that case, she managed to get herself kicked out after repeatedly sharing protected discovery information — however not earlier than getting herself arrested within the courtroom on an impressive warrant from her residence state of Michigan for tampering with voting machines. Lambert mentioned that her movement for professional hac admission had been filed that morning, and cheerfully introduced that she’d been managing the case from behind the scenes for months and was able to proceed with the trial.
Unsurprisingly, the court docket had considerations. And so did the plaintiffs, who famous that Lambert was out on bond on two felony prices and had in some way forgotten to say in her sworn declaration that her PHV utility had been denied within the Center District of Florida simply six weeks earlier in yet one more defamation go well with in opposition to Byrne.
After a short break, Decide Wilson denied Lambert’s PHV utility, ordered her to take away herself from the counsel desk, and instructed Neff he was in control of the case. He additionally knowledgeable Neff that the lawyer is meant to face whereas addressing the court docket — one thing which seemed to be information to the lawyer.
But it surely was not meant to be! After one other break, Neff and Yu returned to tell the court docket that they’d each been fired.
“That will need to have occurred within the final hour,” the decide gaped incredulously.
“It occurred within the final ten minutes, Your Honor,” Yu conceded.
Which is simply as properly, actually, since, because it seems, Neff isn’t admitted to the bar of the Central District of California.
Plaintiff’s counsel promptly moved to carry the defendant in default, since he’d failed to seem for trial. And Decide Wilson instructed the events he’d maintain a present trigger listening to on the movement for default at 9:30 the next morning.
That night, Byrne filed a motion for reconsideration, demanding that the court docket reverse its choice to disclaim PHV admission to Lambert, decrying it as an abuse of discretion, and vowing to take an instantaneous attraction to the Ninth Circuit to vindicate his Sixth Modification proper to counsel. It described Lambert as an election legislation skilled, “the premier specialised lawyer within the County on this area of interest space of legislation.”
This language sounds strikingly like an objection Lambert filed to her disqualification from the Dominion case, through which she described herself as “the foremost main skilled advocate and lawyer within the nation, who has all of the information regarding Dominion’s voting machine techniques, their flaws, and the collusion and involvement by overseas nationals and overseas components straight in federal elections, is telling.” However right here the doc was signed by Florida lawyer Peter Ticktin, Donald Trump’s former boarding faculty roommate who served as native counsel within the Clinton RICO trollsuit that received the president $1 million in sanctions. His PHV utility within the Byrne case was authorised July 24, though he was not among the many many attorneys in court docket on Tuesday.
Within the occasion, Decide Wilson denied Biden’s request for a default judgment and postponed the trial but once more, this time to October 14. The defendant was ordered to nominate new counsel by August 15 and undergo additional discovery on his funds. Lambert’s movement to rethink her professional hac bid was rejected, and Ticktin’s admission was retroactively voided.
All in all, one other massive win for Staff Bananapants Loopy.
Liz Dye produces the Legislation and Chaos Substack and podcast. You’ll be able to subscribe to her Substack by clicking the brand:
