Eric Coomer, the former Dominion Voting Systems executive suing Patrick Byrne for defamation, filed an emergency motion January 16 seeking to bar Byrne’s attorneys from asking him about Venezuela, Serbia, and China during discovery. The motion came thirteen days after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and eight days after Byrne was summoned to the White House.
Coomer’s attorneys told Magistrate Judge Sean P. Flynn the matter was so urgent that Byrne should be required to respond within two days. Judge Flynn granted the request, ordering a response by noon January 22. No public response has surfaced. No ruling has been posted.
The censorship request presents a paradox. In defamation cases, truth is an absolute defense under New York Times v. Sullivan. If Byrne’s claims about Venezuela, Serbia, and China are baseless conspiracy theories, Coomer should want Byrne to present them in court. They would discredit Byrne completely. Yet Coomer moved to prevent the questions from being asked at all.
Every defamation case Coomer has won succeeded because defendants couldn’t prove their claims. Mike Lindell lost a $2.3 million jury verdict in June 2025 because he testified but had no evidence. Joe Oltmann fled his deposition rather than produce proof, now paying $1,000 per day in contempt fines plus $90,000 in sanctions. Newsmax, One America News, and Salem Media all settled with public apologies. Gateway Pundit filed bankruptcy to escape the litigation; a federal judge dismissed it as “bad faith.”
The pattern is clear: When forced to put up or shut up, Coomer’s accusers had nothing. So why is Coomer now moving to prevent Byrne from being asked questions?
Patrick Byrne has spent years publicly claiming he “hacked the government of Venezuela” and possesses evidence showing Dominion’s operations are Venezuelan technology masked as a Denver company. “The tech center is all in Serbia. The machines are made in China,” he said in an August 2021 X Space documented by Media Matters. “We’ve hacked the government of Venezuela. We have the source code… I haven’t even looked at the Dominion discovery. There’s entrepreneurial ways of finding the truth, and there’s legal ways of finding the truth.”
Byrne claims to have spent over $200 million investigating election fraud and says the Venezuelan government placed a $25 million bounty on him. “It’s really weird for me to go up and stand in front of a magistrate in Washington, D.C. who thinks I’m relying on the Dominion discovery,” he said. “I based it all on this illegal activity. I don’t give a shit that I’ve conducted all these felonies.”
In March 2024, the evidence Byrne claims to possess became partially public. Stefanie Lambert, then representing Byrne in a separate Dominion case, leaked thousands of pages of Dominion discovery documents to Barry County, Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf. Lambert claimed the materials showed “email communications produced by Dominion during discovery (some written in Serbian and foreign languages) with and from top level Dominion employees directing and tasking foreign nationals to remotely access voting machines utilized in the United States during the November 3, 2020 election.” She said the remote access occurred “while the states were still counting votes, determining a final tally, and prior to certification of the results.”
Sheriff Dar Leaf notified Rep. Jim Jordan on March 17, 2024, claiming the documents evidenced “conspiracy crimes, wire services fraud, honest services fraud, and perjury charges.”
Dominion called Lambert’s concerns a “xenophobic conclusion that any email from non-US-based Dominion personnel is conclusive evidence of criminal activity.” U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya disqualified Lambert from the D.C. case on August 14, 2024, writing that “Lambert’s repeated misconduct raises the serious concern that she became involved in this litigation for the sheer purpose of gaining access to and publicly sharing Dominion’s protected discovery.” The Supreme Court denied Byrne’s petition to reinstate Lambert in September 2025.
Despite disqualification, Lambert appeared on Lindell TV on January 8, 2026, as Byrne’s representative. Host Emerald Robinson said Byrne had been scheduled to appear but “got called in to the White House today.” Lambert confirmed Byrne was “at the White House” in “a very important meeting.”
The White House meeting occurred five days after U.S. Operation Absolute Resolve captured Maduro in Caracas on January 3. Maduro was arraigned January 5 on narco-terrorism charges. President Trump has repeatedly linked Venezuela to 2020 election fraud claims, sharing Truth Social posts about Dominion the same day as the raid. Gen. Michael Flynn publicly urged Trump to “ask former Venezuelan President Maduro who in the United States worked with him to overthrow the 2020 election.” The DOJ has reportedly been interviewing conspiracy theorists about Venezuela election theft claims since November 2025.
On January 14, six days after the White House meeting, a routine status conference was held in Coomer v. Byrne. Two days later, Coomer filed the emergency protective order motion. What changed between January 14 and January 16? The Venezuela operation had occurred thirteen days earlier. Byrne’s White House meeting had happened eight days before. Both were public knowledge by the status conference.
Byrne typically broadcasts his legal battles on social media, posting videos condemning court orders and admitting to violations. He once told a judge to “throw me in jail for as long as you want.” Yet no public response to Coomer’s emergency motion has surfaced despite the January 22 deadline. The silence is uncharacteristic.
Coomer’s litigation strategy has been consistent: force defendants to prove their claims under the actual malice standard. But truth is an absolute defense—if defendants can prove their statements were true, the defamation claim fails regardless of malice. Lindell couldn’t. Oltmann won’t try. If Byrne’s claims are false, Coomer should want them aired in court.
If the Serbian emails show nothing, why did Lambert risk disqualification, arrest, and felony charges to leak them to law enforcement? Why did Sheriff Dar Leaf notify Congress? Why did Dominion work to disqualify the attorney who leaked them? If concerns about foreign nationals remotely accessing U.S. voting machines during vote counting are merely “xenophobic,” why file an emergency protective order ten months after the leak?
The trial in Coomer’s Colorado lawsuit against the Trump campaign, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Oltmann is scheduled for April 2026. The Case Management Conference in the Byrne case is set for May 20, 2026. Whether Coomer gets his protective order—and whether Byrne ever answers questions about Venezuela, Serbia, and China—may determine which version of 2020 gets told in federal court: the conspiracy theory Coomer says destroyed his life, or the evidence Byrne claims cost him $200 million to obtain.
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