Former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell filed two highly anticipated lawsuits late Wednesday evening aimed at overturning the results of the presidential election in Michigan and Georgia.
The so-called “Kraken” legal filings have been much ballyhooed by supporters and allies of President Donald Trump—despite the fact Powell’s recent performance in public was too bizarre for the 45th president. The Trump campaign distanced itself from Powell just eight days after the president loudly professed to believe that the fire-breathing attorney’s legal acumen augured exceptionally well for the all-but impossible odds against changing the outcome of the 2020 electoral contest.
Legal observers and reporters, however, quickly noticed a few mistakes in Powell’s filings.
These are the first lines of Sidney Powell’s “kraken” lawsuit that Trump supporters have been claiming would save his presidency, not looking great. The rest is just rehashed witness affidavits, including one that claims the ballot paper was suspiciously clean. pic.twitter.com/oihuMeZeig
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) November 26, 2020
“The Kraken is typos!” joked federal appellate attorney Raffi Melkonian via Twitter.
Those typos included two different misspellings of the word “district” at the very top of the Georgia complaint:
only the most serious lawyers strongly bringing the most perfect lawsuit spell like this pic.twitter.com/XE46y0fBxY
— Attorney@Law (@TheGlare_TM) November 26, 2020
New York-based attorney and author Luppe B. Luppen had a similar take–and showcased his own attempts at correcting those issues:
Started trying to proofread the Sidney Powell complaint and I didn’t get very far. I wouldn’t recommend filing this version in court, Sod. https://t.co/bUnKg6jMNe pic.twitter.com/PlR4xNIimO
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 26, 2020
Others pointed to more fundamental/legal problems with the briefs:
forget to run spell check. You don’t make wild accusations.
I mean, seriously, this is not what professionals do. This is the stuff that gets the judge to throw the book at you. It gets the bar association to inquire into your conduct. /end
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) November 26, 2020
Seriously, did they file an actual motion for an emergency temporary restraining order yet? Otherwise, this lawsuit would take weeks to begin under the existing rules. https://t.co/l0KSj8cZC2
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) November 26, 2020
Just in: Cobb County GOP chair Jason Shepherd, one of seven plaintiffs on Sidney Powell’s lawsuit targeting Georgia’s election, tells me he never agreed to be a part of her complaint. “Guess this is what happens when you wait until the last minute.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/2TmhVJ5ylK
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) November 26, 2020
The lawsuits themselves name the governors of Michigan and Georgia as defendants and allege that multiple ballots were forged in both states as well as complaining that ballot canvassing observers were unable to meaningfully oversee the vote count.
Neither lawsuit is expected to make it very far in the federal court system and both of the error-plagued filings will likely need to be resubmitted in order to amend the numerous formatting mistakes that literally make certain segments essentially unreadable.
For example:
We’re trying to read her Michigan complaint. Does anyone here speak Gibberish? pic.twitter.com/diluYt0yEh
— Angry Fleas (@AngryFleas) November 26, 2020
Attorney Ken White excoriated Powell over her haphazard and clumsy filings pre-Thanksgiving lawsuits.
“It reads like it was drafted by [Jeanine Pirro] after a Black Friday sale at BevMo,” he tweeted.
To date, Trump and his attorneys–current and former–have adamantly waged a public relations campaign aimed at convincing the president’s base that widespread electoral and voter fraud occurred during the 2020 election. Also to date, no evidence has been provided that supports those allegations, but the fundraising efforts continue. Powell’s lawsuits will almost certainly not change that calculus but were welcomed by the MAGA faithful who appear determined to go down fighting–no matter how much ridicule and scorn they incur on the way out.
As for the long-awaited Kraken attack on the 2020 election results, the effort waged was decidedly not cephalopod-like in appearance.
But for some, the typos were all part of the “plan,” whatever that is.
[image via MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images]
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