Michigan attorney facing voting machine charges arrested in Washington, D.C.

Michigan lawyer Stephanie Lambert was arrested Monday in Washington, D.C. The arrest came after she failed to turn herself in following a bench warrant issued for her arrest more than a week ago in the criminal case alleging she illegally accessed voting machines in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

Lambert was arrested in a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia courtroom by the U.S. Marshals Service, according to Brady McCarron, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service.

Lambert was in court Washington, D.C. Monday to represent former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne in a separate lawsuit, according to multiple outlets. Byrne − who participated in failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election — faces a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.

As of Tuesday morning, Lambert was in the custody of the Metropolitan Police Department. She was charged with “Fugitive from Justice,” a holding charge, police department spokesperson Tom Lynch wrote in an email. 

In the case against her in Michigan, Lambert − an ally of former President Donald Trump − failed to show up for a court hearing in Oakland County March 7 regarding a court order issued several months earlier requiring her to undergo fingerprinting with which she had not yet complied. A bench warrant was issued against Lambert.

During a hearing last Wednesday, Oakland County Circuit Court Chief Judge Jeffery Matis presiding over Lambert’s case denied a request to set aside the bench warrant after Lambert had days to turn herself in. Lambert is fighting the fingerprinting order in the Michigan Court of Appeals.

In court filings, she argues that her failure to appear for the March 7 hearing was not willful, citing a communication breakdown with her previous attorney. She also argues that the fingerprinting order violates her right to due process and asserts that the special prosecutor in the case against her will improperly use the information to compare with evidence collected from the voting equipment she allegedly handled.

Among her efforts related to the 2020 election, Lambert participated in a Michigan lawsuit that served as a vehicle for conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems and was also involved in an unsuccessful legal bid spearheaded by attorney Sidney Powell to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan and award the state’s Electoral College delegates to Trump.

Amid legal setbacks in the cases related to the 2020 election, Lambert traveled across Michigan to convince local officials to carry out their own election audits.

Michigan voting machine case: Bench warrant issued for pro-Trump Michigan lawyer facing criminal charges

Last August, Lambert was indicted by a grand jury for allegedly joining other Trump allies in a conspiracy to gain illegal access to voting machines after the 2020 election. She has repeatedly blasted the special prosecutor’s review that led to the charges. She has accused Democrats of trying to silence her in a plot to keep Trump out of office in a video posted to her Telegram account on the eve of her indictment.

When Muskegon County Prosecutor DJ Hilson announced the charges against Lambert last August, he noted that he took the unusual step of petitioning to convene a grand jury. “These charges were authorized by an independent citizens grand jury,” Hilson said in a statement at the time. “Protecting the election process is of the utmost importance for our state and country.” He called the prosecution “an important step in that direction.”

Contact Clara Hendrickson at chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743. Follow her on X, previously called Twitter, @clarajanehen.

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