PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — An attorney who unsuccessfully sued to overturn former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in Michigan posted a $10,000 bond and was released from jail after appearing in a Michigan court on an outstanding warrant Thursday.
Stefanie Lambert turned herself in Thursday morning after having been arrested in Washington, D.C., earlier this week as a result of a bench warrant issued by a Michigan judge.
Lambert is facing felony charges of improperly accessing voting equipment in a search for evidence of a purported conspiracy to steal the 2020 election from Trump. She failed to appear at a March 7 hearing, resulting in the warrant.
Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Jeffery Matis ordered Lambert to be taken into custody for fingerprinting and DNA sampling. She returned to the courtroom Thursday wearing a maroon uniform and with her hands cuffed. Matis then ordered that Lambert post a $10,000 cash bond, and she left jail in the evening after doing so.
Prosecutors argued Thursday during proceedings before Matis that Lambert’s actions had forced the entire case “to come to a screeching halt.” Also facing charges in the case are former state GOP Rep. Daire Rendon and Matthew DePerno, former Republican state attorney general candidate.
“Her disruption here has been immense,” said Timothy Maat, a prosecutor from Muskegon County.
The March 7 hearing that Lambert missed concerned a fingerprint and DNA order that Lambert had refused to comply with.
Lambert’s lawyer, Dan Hartman, blamed her missed March 7 appearance on a “breakdown in communication with her former attorney.”
“During this entire period of time of the 14 days, she’s lived at the same house, she’s worked at the same house. She was never a fugitive of justice,” Hartman said.
Lambert denied missing any court appearance, telling The Associated Press as she left jail, “The law being misrepresented, the facts being misrepresented. I’ve now been in jail twice, strip-searched. It was really an intrusive, unnecessary process.”
A pre-trial hearing in Lambert’s case was set for March 28.
Lambert was arrested late Monday following her appearance in federal court in the nation’s capital in another legal matter connected to the election conspiracy theories she and other Trump allies have promulgated. She was in court to defend her actions of leaking internal emails from Dominion Voting Systems, which she obtained during her time as an attorney representing an election denier accused of defaming the company.
District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Heide Herrmann ordered Lambert released on an unsecured $10,000 bond after Lambert’s lawyer said she was “willing and ready” to return to Michigan and face the warrant.
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This story has been updated to correct a misspelled first name for Judge Jeffery Matis, not Jeffrey.
