QANON BELIEVING TRUMP LAWYER AND HER CRAZY CONSPIRACY THEORIES

The crazed conspiracy theories of the Trump lawyer who claimed she would 'unleash the Kraken': How Sidney Powell went from federal prosecutor to claiming Georgia's Republican governor was bribed by Communists to let Biden win

 

By Geoff Earle

 

Daily Mail

November 23, 2020

 

Sidney Powell, the lawyer who proclaimed she was going to 'release the Kraken' – spent a decade as a federal prosecutor in Texas before she gravitated toward bizarre conspiracy theories including one that had Georgia's Trump-backing secretary of state being on the take to hand victory to Joe Biden. 

Powell had already revealed an affinity for QAnon conspiracy theories and gained attention for representing Gen. Mike Flynn as he sought to reverse his guilty plea when she joined the Trump campaign's legal team. 

She made some of the most outlandish claims at a Thursday press conference, where she claimed Venezuela, China, Cuba, George Soros, and Dominion Voting systems were all involved in a plot to throw the election to Biden. 

Days after enduring a blistering commentary on Fox News by host Tucker Carlson, she got dumped from Tump's constantly fluctuating legal team. 

“Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity,' Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a statement.

Both lawyers had stood by Powell, along with attorneys Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing at the presser, where Ellis described the unit as 'an elite strike force team that is working on behalf of the president and the campaign to make sure that our Constitution is protected.'

Trump made no doubt earlier that he appreciated having Powell in his corner, when he tweeted: '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!' tweeted Nov. 14. 

Before joining Trump's increasingly troubled effort to demonstrate election fraud, Powell had built a resume of credentials. She attended law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, served as a U.S. attorney in Texas, and represented Enron execs during the company scandal. 

Days before the infamous presser, Powell made her 'release the Kraken' line, which shot across conservative media, after host Loud Dobbs introduced her as a 'member of Trump's legal team,' Mike Flynn's defense attorney, and a 'great American and prominent appellate lawyer'.

It was there that she said Dominion Voting Systems, which have voting machines in operation nationwide, 'was created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez and then shift internationally to manipulate votes for purchase in other countries, including this one. It was funded by money from Venezuela and Cuba and China has a role in it also.' 

She said she would expose an election fraud effort involving 'Silicon Valley people, the big tech companies, the social media and even the media companies' and cited 'staggering statistical evidence.'

The the Trump presser at the RNC headquarters in Washington, Powell expanded on her theory – now claiming the planned quiet fraud blew up because it 'broke the algorithm.'

'One of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden which we might never have uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in so many of these states that it broke the algorithm that had been plugged into the system, and that's what caused them to have to shut down in the states they shut down in' she said.

She got a smackdown from Fox host Tucker Carlson, who said his show had invited Powell on repeatedly to back up her claims, but she had failed to do so. ''She never demonstrated that a single actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one,' he said.

She denied Carlson's claim that she got angry at the requests, and said she sent him an affidavit to explained the situation, but allowed she was 'not really a numbers person.'

'I fully expect we will be able to prove all of it in court within the next two weeks ... We have more evidence right now than half the prison population is imprisoned on, of this egregious fraud,' she told host Maria Bartiromo. 

One Trump supporting Republican Sen., Joni Ernst of Iowa, pushed back at yet another Powell claim – that members of Congress were in on the deal.   

'We have no idea how many Republican or Democratic candidates in any state across the country paid to have the system rigged to work for them,' Powell said at the press conference.

‘That is an offensive comment,’ shot back Ernst.

By Saturday, she took her conspiracy theory of a multidirectional fraud even further – to include Georgia Sec. of State Brian Kemp.

Kemp is a conservative Trump supporter. 

She told Newsmax – an outlet Trump has been promoting amid his feud with Fox – that Trump lost the state because Kemp was bribed by an election systems company. 

'Georgia's probably going to be the first state I'm gonna blow up and Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it,' she said.

'We've got tons of evidence. It's so much, it's hard to pull it all together,' she said. 'Hopefully, this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical.'

Then she leveled her charge, without evidence, that Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger were on the take. 

'And Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it because they're in on the Dominion scam with their last-minute purchase or reward of a contract to Dominion of $100 million,' she claimed. 

After her time as a prosecutor, Powell went into private practice. She represented executives at Enron and other companies.

She appears to have moved gradually toward her critiques of the 'deep state.'

She penned a book in 2014, Licensed to Lie, on misconduct at the Justice Department. She told Politico the media engaged in 'a significant effort to kill this book with silence.'

After the 2016 election, she became a fierce critic of the Russia probe – flaming Robert Mueller for hiring some of the people she had gone after in her book. 

She would soon be drawn to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that a cabal of Satan-worshiping child-sex traffickers are plotting against President Trump, who is trying to expose. It first emerged on 4chan in 2017.

Powell has also appeared on a QAnon YouTube show, and has repeatedly retweeted QAnon accounts. 

She frequently shares the group's slogans, such as #TheStormisComing, on her social media account.

She gave a talk in 2018 at a fundraiser for Flynn. Her talk was titled: 'Creeps on a Mission to Destroy the President,' Politico reported. The slogan, which she had rolled out on Sean Hannity's Fox News program, ended up with a web site that sold T-shirts denouncing the Mueller probe.

After connecting with Flynn's brother, Powell would become Flynn's lawyer after he dumped his respected law firm of Covington & Burling, and sought to reverse his plea.

Trump hailed the move on Twitter after it was announced in 2019. 'General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has now retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell. Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!' Trump wrote. 

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Dominion Voting Systems says it is 'physically impossible' for their machines to 'switch votes from one candidate to the other' after Trump lawyers accused the company of meddling in the election to help Biden

 

By Luke Kenton

 

Daily Mail

November 22, 2020 

 

A spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems hit back at conspiracy theories that the software company meddled in the election to benefit Joe Biden, insisting it was ‘physically impossible’ for its machines to change voter selections.

Michael Steel appeared on Fox News’ America’s News HQ on Sunday to debunk accusations made by attorneys working for the Trump campaign, who laid unfounded claims of voter fraud in a press conference earlier this week that included allegations Dominion had ties to Venezuela.

One of the attorney’s, Sidney Powell, who was disavowed by the Trump campaign Sunday, claimed the president had actually won the election ‘by a landslide’ but had been cheated by an 'algorithm' designed by Dominion.

Powell later reiterated the outlandish conspiracy in an interview with Newsmax on Saturday, in which she said Dominion’s machines – which are used in 28 states - had been programmed to ensure votes cast for Trump actually went to Biden instead.

Without offering evidence, Powell claimed that Dominion 'has a long history of rigging elections' and that this is 'what it was created to do to begin with.’

In response, Steel said Sunday that Dominion is ‘a nonpartisan American company. It is not physically possible for our machines to switch votes from one candidate to the other.

‘Our election system is run by local elected officials and nonpartisan poll watchers. We simply provide a tool to count the ballots and to print and count ballots,’ he continued.

During a bizarre press conference with Rudy Giuliani at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington on Thursday, Powell claimed Dominion used Smartmatic technology, which she said was ‘created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez’.

Powell claimed Chavez, who died in 2013, developed Smartmatic technology to ensure he never lost an election.

She also claimed that votes for the US election were actually counted in countries such as Spain and Germany.

Steel vehemently rejected Powell’s notions, insisting: ‘There is no way such a massive fraud could have taken place, and there are no connections between our company and Venezuela, Germany, Barcelona, Kathmandu, [or] whatever the latest conspiracy theory is.’

When pressed by host Eric Shawn on how he could be sure Dominion’s machines were secure, he said that when voters cast their ballots, they fill it out on a touchscreen and are then given a printed copy that they hand to a local election official for safekeeping.

‘If any electronic interference had taken place, the tally reported electronically would not match the printed ballots,’ Steel said. ‘And in every case where we’ve looked at in Georgia, all across the country, the printed ballots, the gold standard in election security, has matched the electronic tally.’

Steel, who said he identifies as a conservative Republican, added that Dominion would ‘love to see any facts or evidence’ the Trump campaign has to substantiate their wild accusations.

‘Thus far we have seen none,’ Steel said, adding that in the 14 counties in Pennsylvania that used Dominion machines, President Trump won with 52 percent of the vote.

Furthermore, Steel said Dominion did not even have machines in some of the Wisconsin counties where the campaign has made accusations of fraud.

‘I can't imagine that someone would want to be in a position of authority in our election system and in our democracy just to subvert it,’ Steel said. ‘I think these are public spirited people. I think these are patriots and they are doing their job to the best of their ability to make sure we get accurate, transparent results.’

When quizzed as to whether a poll worker could use a USB drive to add votes for a candidate, Steel clarified that the machines don’t have such access points, and said the tabulators are not connected to the internet.

‘It’s not physically possible to do what they’re describing,’ Steel insisted.