Following a flurry of weekend emergency requests and a rare Sunday evening Zoom hearing, a federal judge has made several key rulings in the so-called “Kraken” lawsuit filed by freelance Donald Trump ally Sidney Powell in her attempts to upend the reported results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The Sunday Zoom was reportedly “not announced on the court’s docket and appears not to have been open to the press or public,” as Politico worded it, but a minute entry in the court docket has since stated that the 7:52 p.m. Sunday “non-evidentiary” motion hearing lasted 56 minutes; that a court reporter was present; and that both sides of the case were represented. Most of the arguments were recapped in a four-page order issued late Sunday.
The outcome of the hearing was several fold. Relevantly, here is the upshot: first, the judge ordered the defendants (various government officials) from “altering, destroying, or erasing, or allowing the alteration, destruction, or erasure of, any software or data on any Dominion voting machine in Cobb Gwinnett, and Cherokee Counties.” Second, the defendants were ordered to provide Powell and her team with “a copy of the contract between the State and Dominion.” Third, in a separate order, the judge allowed an immediate interlocutory appeal because, as he wrote, the restraining order request “involves a controlling question of law as to which there is substantial ground for difference of opinion and that an immediate appeal from the order may materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation.” Fourth, a schedule for further briefs and arguments was ordered.
The orders are signed by Judge Timothy C. Batten, Sr., a George W. Bush appointee. They followed motions for emergency injunctive relief and for a temporary restraining order filed by Powell’s team.
The motion for emergency injunctive relief was accompanied by a six-page declaration by GOP poll worker who said he or she transferred information from overseas ballots to new ballots which could be read by elections machines. “The first batch of ballots were overseas and largely (95%+) for Biden,” the declaration reads. It also states that a machine recount was scheduled for Monday which would wipe the voting machines clean to “zero” — a procedure the plaintiffs did not want to happen. (The name of the person making the declaration was redacted from the official docket, making the accusations publicly anonymous but known to the judge.)
The 30-page motion for a TRO, as it is coded in the court’s docket, included an emergency motion for declaratory emergency, and permanent injunctive relief. It flatly claims that the “vote count certified by” the state “on November 20 is wrong.”
“Tens of thousands of votes counted toward Vice President Biden’s final tally were the product of illegality, and physical and computer-based fraud leading to ‘outright ballot stuffing,'” the document further alleges.
The motion asked a judge to halt the resetting of elections machines to zero for yet another recount because doing so, in the view of the plaintiffs, “would destroy relevant evidence now existing on each voting machine.”
Powell and her team, which includes lawyer Lin Wood, claim a whopping “96,600 mail-in votes were illegally cast.” Joe Biden won Georgia by a certified margin of 12,670 votes, the filing notes. A sworn affidavit by Russel Ramsland is summarized as follows (this is the core of Powell’s beef with the election):
The first red flag comes from mail-in ballots dates. The voter records of the counties show that 96,600 mail-in ballots were voted, yet the county records show they were never received back. Further, 42 mail-in ballots were received back completed before they were mailed out to the voter by the county, 1,887 mail-in ballots were received back completed the same day they were mailed out to the voter by the county, 1,786 mail-in ballots were received back completed one day after they were mailed out to the voter by the county and 2,275 mail-in ballots were received back completed only two days after they were mailed out to the voter by the county. This impossible phenomenon occurred throughout the counties of Georgia and were not an isolated event.
What follows is a chart of alleged troubles which resulted in the plaintiffs’ math:
Ballots received back completed BEFORE they were mailed out: 42
Ballots received back completed THE SAME DAY they were mailed out: 1,887
Ballots received back completed ONE day after they were mailed out: 1,786
Ballots received back completed TWO days after they were mailed out: 2,275
Total Ballots with impossible mail out and received back completed dates: 5,990
Ballots with NO RETURN RECORD AT ALL: 231,188
Ballots with NO RETURN RECORD & Cancelled: -134,588
Ballots with NO RETURN RECORD & Voted: 96,600
Powell and her team proffered further analyses by Matt Braynard, William M. Briggs, Ph.D., and Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai. The analysis by Briggs of Braynard’s “recorded calls and declarations of voters” suggests between 31,559 and 38,886 ballots were “mailed in, but were never counted.” Braynard, per the court papers, also claims 20,311 people voted in Georgia after having moved out of the state.
Ayyadurai’s analysis, according to the Powell-led plaintiffs, suggested the machines set to be zeroed out on Monday needed to be preserved. A fearsome “‘High Republican, Low Trump’ vote pattern” emerged, the court papers argue, indicating “anomalies that are improbable.” When ethnic metrics were studied, “President Trump received near zero Black votes, which is also highly improbable,” Powell claimed.
In other words, the plaintiffs are unwilling to accept that Georgia Republicans turned on the President or that Trump may not have been the best president for the Black community since Abraham Lincoln — a claim Trump himself has boasted.
The Democratic Party of Georgia moved to intervene in the case with a motion to dismiss.
The relevant documents are grouped together below:
Pearson v. Kemp (Sidney Powell 2020 Election Lawsuit) – Various Motions & Orders by Law&Crime on Scribd
[Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images]
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