Candace Owens Scores Major Legal Victory
Candace Owens Scores Legal Victory As Court Dismisses Onetime House Candidate Klacik’s Defamation Suit
On Wednesday, Kimberly Klacik, a onetime Republican congressional candidate, had her defamation lawsuit against Candace Owens dismissed, and was ordered to pay the Daily Wire host $115,000 in legal fees, ending an almost 18-month-long battle playing out in court and on social media.
Klacik first made headlines in 2020, while running for a Baltimore-area House seat, when a video of her walking through the city’s slums went viral. She sued Owens in 2021 after Owens alleged she had committed campaign fraud and money laundering, took drugs, and had worked at a strip club.
The $20 million suit, filed in Davidson County, Tennessee, had been working its way toward a hearing on Owens’ motion for dismissal, but Klacik did a sudden about face, stipulating to an agreement ending her case, which was signed off by the judge.
The claims from Owens came on June 22, 2021, in a 44-minute video posted to Instagram. Owens warned conservatives that Klacik was not to be trusted. The suit was later filed in Baltimore County before it was moved to Tennessee, and Klacik claimed that Owens’ disclosures about her cost lucrative financial opportunities, including a book deal and a contract with a “nationally recognized vendor,” the Baltimore Sun reported.
Owens also claimed in the video that a charity that Klacik had established, called Potential Me that she claimed helped women find jobs, was a scam, and she accused her of misusing campaign funds during her 2020 bid for Congress.
Earlier this year, Klacik claimed on Twitter that the judge in the case had ruled in her favor against Owens’ motion to dismiss, vowing to continue fighting to clear her name. Owens clashed with her, denying that such a hearing had taken place.
“This level of lying is actually incomprehensible to me,” Owens wrote on Instagram. “You realize that Kim Klacik is lying now on a judge that is currently presiding over a case. How does that person possess the audacity to disrespect a judge and to do so in public?”
Klacik ran in April 2020, in a special election to finish the term of Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, who passed away in October 2019. She lost to Rep. Kweisi Mfume, but spoke at the 2020 Republic National Convention. When Mfume came up for reelection in the 2020 general election, Klacik challenged him again, unsuccessfully.