Attorney Sidney Powell
Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis on Sunday released a statement disavowing its association with Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell, claiming she had nothing to do with the president or his campaign. The statement from the Trump campaign said Powell was freestyling on her own, not under the aegis of the campaign.
“Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” read a joint statement from Giuliani and Ellis. “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”
The statement came only three days after all three attorneys participated in one of the most bizarre press conferences in American history. Powell, Giuliani, and Ellis each contributed baseless allegations concerning the election integrity, and each ultimately concluded falsely that President Donald Trump was the winner of the 2020 election.
But even during this off-the-rails event, Powell, who has also been representing Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in his never-ending federal criminal case, managed to separate herself from the pack with conspiracy theories that reached nonsensical new heights.
Powell falsely asserted that a server hosting evidence of election fraud was located in Germany and seized by U.S. authorities. She even said Georgia used voting machine software created at the direction of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, and that the software was used to switch millions of votes for Trump to votes for Joe Biden.
The repudiation of Powell was also eyebrow-raising considering both President Trump and Ellis had referred to Powell as a member of the president’s legal team, with Ellis specifically referring to her as being part of the “elite strike force team,” representing the Trump campaign’s legal efforts during Thursday’s presser.
Trump lumped Powell into a group of “wonderful” lawyers on his “truly great team.”
“I look forward to Mayor Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS! Rudy Giuliani, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives!” Trump tweeted on Nov. 14, just eight days before his campaign would publicly distance itself from Powell.
Ellis echoed that sentiment just two days later.
The campaign’s repudiation of Powell also followed a Saturday interview with conservative news outlet Newsmax, during which she accused Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Reffensperger, both of whom are Republicans, of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to subvert a Trump victory in the state by pocketing millions of dollars in a deal with voting software company Dominion.
“Georgia’s probably going to be the first state I’m going to blow up and Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it,” she said, also threatening that the impending lawsuit she planned to file would be “biblical.” Powell also falsely said Rep. Doug Collins had actually won his primary race against Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
The unsupported allegation comes little more than a month before the Peach State will host two Senate run-off elections that will determine the balance of power in the Senate.
According to a Sunday report from the New York Times, even Giuliani, whose claims about massive election-altering voter fraud have not been supported by evidence, thought Powell had crossed the line with her allegations.
“On Saturday and Sunday, several of the president’s advisers urged Mr. Trump to part ways with Ms. Powell, people briefed on the discussions said. One of those people said that even Mr. Giuliani had recognized that she had gone too far,” the report stated.
[image via Fox News screengrab]