Stefanie Lambert was a Detroit defense lawyer working on a succession of routine criminal cases – theft, drug possession and firearms charges. Then Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss transformed her life.
As Trump started falsely alleging voter fraud that November, Lambert began reinventing herself as a key player in his campaign to overturn the election results. She pushed conspiracy theories in court, joined efforts to break into voting machines seeking evidence of fraud and organized a nonprofit that has raised at least a half million dollars to finance election challenges.
A REUTERS INVESTIGATION
- CONSPIRACY CHRONICLES
- The origins and evolution of the election-denial movement
- Part 1. The programmer
- Part 2. The professor
- Part 3. The attorney
Lambert advanced quickly to the vanguard of a campaign by pro-Trump lawyers to perpetuate the election-denial movement through the nation’s courts. That movement endures despite the wholesale rejection of its baseless claims by judges across America, and despite the poor showing in last month’s midterm elections by Trump-backed candidates who embraced his stolen-election falsehoods. In Arizona, election conspiracists Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, who ran as Republicans for governor and secretary of state in the midterms, have claimed they were cheated and challenged their losses in court. Neither Finchem nor Lake responded to requests for comment.
Lambert started in her home state of Michigan, joining four lawsuits on behalf of Trump supporters. They included two within weeks of the 2020 election that challenged Democrat Joe Biden’s victory based on debunked fraud allegations and sought to impound voting machines across Michigan to inspect for evidence.
She has worked with a lawyer pursuing another four lawsuits in Pennsylvania, three targeting state and local officials and one against Dominion Voting Systems, according to court records and Lambert’s social media posts. The suits relied on similarly debunked fraud claims.
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
Lambert has also been involved in unauthorized breaches of sensitive election equipment in three states, according to a review of legal filings, police records and people familiar with the matter. Such violations can expose confidential voter information, enable election-tampering by revealing security protocols and raise questions about the vulnerability of voting systems to manipulation.
Michigan’s attorney general accused Lambert in August of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to seize vote tabulators. Lambert denies any wrongdoing and remains defiant.
“I am not intimidated!” Lambert said in a statement posted to social media after being named as a target of the state probe. She called herself “a voice for the American people” in a July 2021 interview with two right-wing websites, the Gateway Pundit and 100 Percent Fed Up.
Lambert, 41, declined requests to be interviewed for this article. In response to detailed written questions from Reuters, a lawyer representing Lambert sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the news organization halt publication of this story, saying its inquiries included “fraudulent misrepresentations.”