Kraken Lawyer Sidney Powell Demands To Be Tried Separately From Election Stealing Hooligans In GA RICO Case

// Yesterday, Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell filed a motion to sever her case from her riffraff codefendants in the RICO election interference case filed by prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia.

“Sidney Powell has been practicing law for forty-five years in the highest traditions of the Bar,” she began, before launching into a recitation of her career “built on integrity, the Rule of Law, and her love of Truth and Justice.” Powell points to the dismissal of charges against former NSA Michael Flynn as the capstone of her achievement, crowing that she forced the government to admit that it “had no basis to investigate Flynn, and it had committed stunning violations of Brady v. Maryland.” This was not the general consensus with respect to Flynn among the legal community of which Powell claims to be a member in good standing.

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But the defendant’s standing in the legal community has taken something of a hit since she took up residence in the loonier corners of Trump world. Her vow to “release the Kraken” became shorthand for the debacle of Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the election results through dozens of failed lawsuits. A federal judge in Michigan sanctioned her for leading a team of attorneys who “scorned their oath, flouted the rules, and attempted to undermine the integrity of the judiciary along the way.” Fox News paid $787 million to settle a defamation case after it aired Powell’s nonsensical allegations about fraud perpetrated by Dominion Voting Systems’ election equipment. Powell herself remains a defendant in multiple defamation cases. And when Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump and referred to “Co-Conspirator 3, an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged sounded ‘crazy,'” everyone knew exactly who he meant.

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In this pleading, Powell claims to have had very little to do with her codefendants.

“It cannot be disputed that Ms. Powell went her own way following the election, and she never reached an agreement on a course of action with any indicted or unindicted coconspirator—and certainly not any illegal course of action,” she argued, adding that “the vast majority of the so-called ‘Manner and Means of the Enterprise,’ ‘Acts of Racketeering Activity and Overt Acts in Furtherance of the Conspiracy,’ and Counts of the Indictment have absolutely nothing to do with her.”

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She shrugs off her appearance at the infamous RNC press conference with a leaky Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis counting her among the “elite strike force.” That was just an exercise of her First Amendment right to speak on matters of public importance, as was her attempt to get Trump to appoint her special counsel so she could seize all the voting machines nationwide and deploy the National Guard to do a recount. Sure, a non-profit she founded and appeared to be running through her client-trust account paid the tech team that unlawfully imaged voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia. But she made that payment “gratuitously,” so it doesn’t count.

Powell’s motion, filed by attorney Brian Rafferty, late of Baker & Hostetler, is very funny, and mostly not on purpose. Her argument that she was only a teensy bit involved in the conspiracy, and not the whole electoral college part, is hilarious. But she does kind of have point when she argues that it would be odd to hive off a small number of defendants whose actions were unrelated and make them stand trial together.

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Powell asserted her right to a speedy trial, which she says will take just three days: “Assuming the prosecution does not realize its error in indicting her and agree to dismiss this wrongful prosecution before trial immediately, Ms. Powell can be tried alone in three days at most and should receive a judgment of acquittal when the State rests.”

The only other defendant to have done this is Ken Cheseboro, one of the architects of the fake electors scheme. Prosecutors immediately responded by setting his trial date for October 23, 2023. In contrast, Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants to be tried after the 2024 election, and will also seek to sever his case from the others.

Powell’s not wrong when she says that none of her garbage cases or even her purported connection to tampering with the machines in Coffee County had anything to do with Cheseboro’s natterings about the unconstitutionality of the Electoral Count Act. It would indeed be odd to try just these two lawyers together. But since District Attorney Fani Willis has moved to try all 19 co-conspirators together in October, Powell’s argument may be less than availing.

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In the meantime, Judge Scott McAffee has ruled that the entire proceeding, including all motions hearings, will be broadcast live on YouTube. Get your Diet Dr. Pepper ready!

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Crime, Government, Sidney Powell