Despite Congress’ overcoming of an insurrection to certify the Electoral College vote count in favor of President-elect Joe Biden this week, former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell is still trying—and failing—to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Monday rejected Powell’s attempt to appear as lead counsel in an appeal from one of her infamous “Kraken” lawsuits challenging the state of Georgia’s vote tabulation. Why the rejection? Because former federal prosecutor Powell isn’t a member of the Court’s bar and didn’t apply to appear pro hac vice in the proceeding.
“In order to participate in this appeal, you must complete and submit an application for admission to the bar or application to appear pro hac vice within 14 days from the date of this letter,” Clerk of the Court David J. Smith wrote in a letter to Powell. “If your application is not received within 21 days, any motions or other papers that have been conditionally filed in the appeal may be clerically stricken and treated as though they were never filed.”
Initially hyped up to intense fanfare among President Donald Trump’s stalwart followers, the Georgia petition—filed in late November—came under intense scrutiny that quickly led to a cascade of Twitter-based mockery and scorn. Legal observers pointed out several clumsy formatting and typographical errors, including the fact that word “district” was misspelled twice at the very top of the filing.
Powell’s string of election challenges have been disastrous. Not only has she failed to notch a single legal victory, but a company at the heart of one of her far-fetched election fraud conspiracy theories is suing her for a fortune. Dominion Voting Systems, which provided hardware and software for voting machines in several states, last week sued Powell in Washington, D.C. federal court. The action seeks damages to the tune of more than $1.3 billion for “wild” and “demonstrably false” allegations against the company that Powell made through “conspiracy theorists, con artists, armchair ‘experts,’ and anonymous sources,” the filing said.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Powell was one of roughly a dozen people and entities that received some 21 retraction and document preservation notices from Dominion last month, but the company said that the threat of litigation did not chasten her.
Powell repeatedly asserted the bizarre claim that the long-dead Hugo Chavez was the impetus for Dominion’s basic existence. Then there was the inflation of credentials for an alleged expert witness and reliance on an “error-filled” report that substituted election data from Minnesota for Michigan.
Powell was also among a swath of right-wing accounts to be removed from Twitter last Friday for violating the social media platform’s policy on Coordinated Harmful Activity.
Read the Eleventh Circuit’s letter to Powell below:
Eleventh Circuit Powell Letter by Law&Crime on Scribd
[image via YouTube screengrab]
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