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President Trump’s campaign on Sunday disowned Sidney Powell, one of his attorneys who pushed false allegations of election fraud, after he brought out fierce accusations that Republican officials were involved in a payment system to manipulate machines to vote.
Ms Powell’s repudiation, which has come in the hands of former allies like Rudolph W. Giuliani, added unwanted drama for the President’s legal team as she loses case after case, providing a public window on the matter. chaotic and amateurish nature. tactics of most of his attempts so far to fight the election result.
Even though many campaign aides, White House advisers, and professional lawyers want nothing to do with the allegations, a small group of lawyers from Mr. Trump’s campaign chaired a widely ridiculed and circus to try to invalidate the votes and prevent states from certifying their results.
People like Ms Powell and Mr Giuliani have been frequent guests on Tory news programs, where they have made spurious statements that have been rejected by judges or that the Trump campaign has refrained from echoing in court lack of evidence.
Ms Powell, who was not directly involved in the cases the Trump campaign brought to court, appeared with her legal team at a press conference last week, and was adopted by the President and many its allies because of its categorical and unconditional defense. a range of unfounded claims.
On Sunday, however, the Trump campaign turned the tide.
“Sidney Powell exercises law alone”, he said in a statement. “She is not a member of Trump’s legal team. She is also not the President’s lawyer in a personal capacity.
In a statement released to CBS News, Ms Powell said she understood the statement by Mr Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, another lawyer for Trump, and that she would continue to file a complaint related to her unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud. .
The disallowance came a day after a Pennsylvania judge gutted arguments other members of Mr. Trump’s legal team had made in court that millions of votes in the state should be struck down .
Ms Powell was described as a member of the legal team’s ‘elite strike force’ during Thursday’s press conference as she exposed an elaborate conspiracy theory on the efforts of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, mainly to rig the elections. in the United States using voting machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. As Mr. Trump became obsessed with the idea of a global conspiracy, cybersecurity officials in his own government said there was no evidence the machines had been compromised.
Appearing on the Conservative Newsmax network on Saturday night, Ms Powell pushed the conspiracy theory further, claiming that two main Republicans in Georgia – Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – were taking profits as part of the scheme, and this representative Doug Collins of Georgia had actually won his Senate race against Senator Kelly Loeffler. (He didn’t; Ms Loeffler’s race heads for a second round without Mr Collins.) Ms Powell said she plans to file a “biblical” complaint in the state.
Two polls in Georgia on Jan. 5 are expected to determine which party controls the Senate, and Republicans fear the Trump campaign’s legal efforts there will affect these races, who are expected to have lower turnout than the general election in Georgia. this month.
Ms Powell’s claims have been widely ridiculed, including by some of Trump’s allies. Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, told ABC’s “This Week” that the legal team had become a “national embarrassment.” Most of the president’s other lawyers have refused to get involved in his efforts to delay certification of the vote in the states.
Mr Trump has been agitated over Mr Giuliani and Ms Powell for the past few days, advisers said, complaining about the way Ms Powell sounded at Thursday’s press conference, the way black streams of liquid had run down Mr. Giuliani’s face, and over how long the appearance had stretched.
Several of the president’s advisers on Saturday and Sunday urged Mr. Trump to part ways with Ms. Powell, people briefed on the talks said. One of those people said that even Mr. Giuliani admitted that she had gone too far.
But Ms Powell also made an easy target for deviation by Mr Giuliani and others, as Mr Trump expressed his frustrations with the Pennsylvania judge’s scathing decision.
Other lawyers for Mr. Trump who have largely remained out of the fray believe Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell simply told the president what he wanted to hear. The President has clung to Ms Powell’s claims about Dominion machine votes over the past two weeks.
The central idea of Ms. Powell’s conspiracy theory – that a large and powerful network of Mr. Trump’s enemies prevented him from achieving victory – has been largely constant, although the distribution of authors and accomplices varied from one setting to another.
In an interview last week on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, where she spoke with few interruptions for almost 20 minutes, Ms Powell claimed the voting machines in question were designed to rig elections.
The day before, on Fox Business, Ms Powell said the plot involved “dead” who voted “in large numbers” – again without proof – and claimed that fraudulent paper ballots were also part of the scheme.
In September, Ms Powell admitted at a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington that she had taken the highly unusual step of briefing Mr Trump on the case of one of her most important clients, Michael. T. Flynn, the former national of Mr. Trump. security advisor.
While representing Mr. Flynn, Ms. Powell has often amplified social media posts promoting QAnon, the conspiracy theory that supporters believe Mr. Trump is fighting against a cabal of satanic pedophiles.
The cold shoulder stretched out to Ms Powell was just the latest embarrassment for Mr Trump’s legal team, for which more than 30 lawsuits challenging the integrity of the election were either dismissed or voluntarily withdrawn in half a dozen of battlefield states.
A major loss came in Pennsylvania on Saturday night when Federal Judge Matthew W. Brann dismissed a lawsuit to stop the state’s certification of election results and slammed it in harsh, assimilating language. his argument to the “Frankenstein monster” and saying he was “not supported by the evidence”.
Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.
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