Sidney Powell Is Apologizing to Georgians. Why Stop There?
Sidney Powell made false claims about an an extraordinary amount of people during this Nov. 19, 2020 press conference.Tom Williams/Zuma
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, we learned Thursday, agreed to write a letter of apology to citizens of the state of Georgia for her role in a scheme to illegally access voting records there. The letter, which the Washington Post described as “a terse handwritten note on a legal pad” is part of a plea deal Powell reached with prosecutors in Fulton County. She’s also paying a fine, admitting to six misdemeanors, and has agreed testify in the upcoming trial of Donald Trump and other defendants in that election subversion case. But her mea culpa to Peach State residents raises a question: Why stop there?
After all, Powell, a Texas-based attorney who first gained national attention representing Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, has spun elaborate, bogus conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that involve a lot more people than Georgia’s 11 million residents. Her lies implicated numerous states, countries, institutions, and people.
Here are some other parties Powell might consider apologizing to:
Citizens of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona: At an infamous November 19 news conference at Republican National Committee headquarters—the one where brown liquid oozed down Rudy Giuliani’s face—Powell and Giuliani claimed to have evidence of fraud affecting the outcomes of the presidential votes in those states too. They did not. But Powell nevertheless filed a series of lawsuits attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in various places. All were quickly tossed out, and Powell and other attorneys have been sanctioned in Michigan and hit with other disciplinary efforts elsewhere.
The Family of Hugo Chavez: The late Venezuelan dictator, to be sure, has a lot to answer for. But Chavez, who died in 2013, did not help rig the 2020 US election for Biden, as Powell seemed to suggest in the same November 2020 news conference. She claimed software used by multiple voting machine companies was “created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election.” That isn’t true, and Powell faces ongoing lawsuits for allegedly defaming multiple voting machine companies.
China, Cuba, and Venezuela: Powell alleged at the same presser that “what we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States.” Again, you can fault Venezuela, Cuba, and China for all kinds of bad deeds, but there is no evidence they rigged the US election.
Texas lawyers: The Texas State Bar has an ongoing disciplinary case against her related to her false election fraud claims that could result in her disbarment there. Powell’s guilty plea in Georgia apparently won’t affect that case. Without getting into the weeds of Texas legal practices, it is surely fair to say that Powell has not covered her fellow attorneys in glory.
Germany and Spain: Giuliani and Powell, in laying out their elaborate international conspiracy, also alleged that US votes were counted in Germany and Spain. That was an amplification of a completely false story involving a US Army raid targeting a Spanish company.
George Soros and the Jews: Inevitably, George Soros also came up in Powell’s rants. She falsely claimed the 93-year old billionaire philanthropist had ties to Dominion Voting Systems. Conspiracy theories involving Soros, a Holocaust survivor, revive old antisemitic claims of Jewish financiers secretly manipulating world events. Powell didn’t quite say “the Jews” were in on the election conspiracy, but you could be forgiven for getting that vibe.
Donors to Defending the Republic: In television appearances in November 2020, Powell suggested that rampant election fraud was obvious and solicited money for a nonprofit she’d launched. Her pitch implied she was close to the only person really working to keep Trump in power. “People can donate to the fund because I want this fraud fully prosecuted on behalf of the voters and the American people that deserve election integrity,” Powell told Lou Dobbs. “And it’s just gonna take a much more vigorous effort than I see being conducted right now.” Such efforts eventually helped Powell raise more than $16.4 million for the group. As of its last public filing a year ago, the nonprofit reported spending just a fraction of that haul looking for voter fraud. It’s main expense was a $700,000 payment to Cyber Ninjas, a group that led an election audit in Maricopa Country, Arizona that failed to find any fraud while generating extensive criticism.
Powell’s nonprofit, Mother Jones reported, also paid for the defenses of some member of the Oath Keepers militia group who stormed the Capitol on January 6. Powell has been accused in a lawsuit of raiding Defending the Republic’s coffers to pay personal legal expenses. While it is not evident that Powell broke the law in misleading donors, she certainly did not deliver on her promise of exposing voter fraud that cost Trump the election.
Capitol Police and staffers: Powell’s lies helped spark the January 6 assault on Congress. She hasn’t said sorry. Instead her nonprofit paid for the defense of some of the Capitol’s most prominent attackers.
