Who Is Sidney Powell?
Sidney Katherine Powell, an American lawyer, and a former federal prosecutor were born in 1955. Her attempts to manipulate the 2020 presidential election are what made her most well-known, and the State Bar of Texas sought sanctions on her, including probable disbarment.
In the Western District of Texas, Powell started off as an assistant US lawyer. She investigated Jimmy Chagra, who was charged with the murder of US district judge John H. Wood Jr. in May 1979, during her time in office. She assisted CEOs in the Enron crisis and defended retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn in the United States v. Flynn case in 2019.
In an effort to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 u.s. presidential election, Powell entered the legal team of then-President Donald Trump. Powell decided to meet with the president in the White House despite Trump’s legal team distancing itself from her after a number of interviews in which she spread nonsensical claims about electoral theft. Powell proceeded in filing independent election lawsuits in district courts, and in the end, he was unsuccessful in four federal lawsuits in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin.
Powell advocated figures and catchphrases linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory and asserted that Flynn was set up by a clandestine “deep state” operation.
She claimed that a covert global cabal, which included communists, “globalists,” George Soros, Hugo Chavez (who passed away in 2013), the Clinton Foundation, the CIA, and lots of Democratic and Republican officials, which include Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia and a close ally of Donald Trump, used election systems to steal millions of votes from him in the 2020 election.
Both Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic filed defamation lawsuits against her when she claimed that they were trying to rig the election.
An official warning for Powell, Lin Wood, and seven other pro-Trump attorneys’ lawsuit to reverse Trump’s election defeat was issued by a federal judge in Michigan in August 2021. The judge decided that by filing spurious and frivolous cases in an effort to erode public confidence in the democratic process, the nine attorneys had engaged in “a historic and significant misuse of the judicial process.”
The judge ruled that they must reimburse Michigan and Detroit for their legal defense costs. Powell and the other attorneys were also referred by the court to state discipline authorities for possible disbarment due to ethical infractions.
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Sidney Powell Career
Powell worked as an assistant U.S. Lawyer for the Western, Northern, and Eastern Districts of Texas and Virginia from 1978 to 1988. She was in charge of both civil and criminal trials. She was named the Western District of Texas’s first Appellate Section Chief, then the Northern District of Texas.
In 1993, Powell opened her own legal office in Dallas, Texas.
She started her practice in Asheville, North Carolina, about 2002, but eventually returned to Texas.
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After The Jan. 6 Hearing, Here Are Five Things To Know About Dallas Attorney Sidney Powell
Seizing Voting Machines
The panel’s top Republican, Cheney, stated Powell visited with Trump on December 18, 2020, to discuss “dramatic moves,” along with former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
These actions, according to Cheney, included suggestions like holding a new election and having the military take voting equipment. The encounter, according to Cheney, was the catalyst for Trump’s tweet that evening, “Be there,” in reference to Washington, D.C. on January 6. I’ll be Wild!
The Los Angeles Times said that on that day, Powell, Flynn, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne gave the president a draught executive order that would allow him to seize control of the voting devices used in the 2020 election.
Powell was initially subpoenaed by the panel on January 6 along with Giuliani and the lawyers for the Trump and Ellis campaigns, Jenna Ellis and Boris Epshteyn.
Preserving A Media Face
Powell has kept showing up at conservative gatherings to support Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations that the 2020 election was rigged against him.
Thursday night in Dallas, Powell and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller was slated to attend and speak at a screening event for the pro-Trump movie “2,000 Mules.”
Powell was advertised as signing copies of her two books, Conviction Machine: Standing Up to Federal Prosecutorial Abuse and Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice, at the Dallas Jewish Conservatives’ event.
Proceedings At The Texas State Bar
In light of Powell’s unsuccessful efforts to challenge the 2020 election results on behalf of the Trump campaign, the State Bar of Texas is considering taking action against her.
The filing of “frivolous” voter fraud lawsuits in four states, as well as Powell’s allegedly lying to a judge and presenting fake evidence, caused a state bar committee to file a petition charging Powell of professional misconduct in March.
In the petition, the court is tasked with deciding on an appropriate punishment, which might be anything from a reprimand to disbarment. This is on top of the punishments Powell previously received in Michigan and a $1 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems Corp. for spreading rumors about their voting devices.
The Texas Bar’s conclusion, Powell told Reuters, “was entirely predictable, but it’s a regrettable and unsatisfactory decision by the bar.” No attorney could practice law under the restrictions they would impose on me.
Disavowed by Trump insiders
Giuliani and Ellis officially disavowed Powell and made it apparent that she was no longer associated with the Trump campaign after propagating absurd and baseless claims about a global conspiracy to rig the election in November 2020.
“Sidney Powell works as a sole practitioner of law. She doesn’t belong to the Trump Legal Team. She does not represent the President in his individual role, they added in a statement.
Powell “was too conspiratorial even for [Trump],” a Trump advisor reportedly told The New York Times.
Links To Texas
Since 1978, Powell has had a Texas legal license to practice.
Powell, who is from Durham, North Carolina, worked as an assistant US attorney and the head of the appellate department in the Western and Northern Districts of Texas.
Powell served as the prosecutor in Western Texas’ criminal enterprise case against American drug smuggler Jimmy Chagra. Chagra was charged with murder in the 1979 killing of U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, among other offenses.
In 1993, Powell founded her Dallas-based law company, specializing in high-profile lawsuits. She belongs to the Texas State Bar, and the Dallas Bar Association reports that she belonged to the organization up until the end of 2014.
The Dallas Morning News archives were used to create this report.