Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 07:12, 22 November 2020

Sidney Katherine Powell (born 1955) is an American attorney and former prosecutor.

After graduating from law school in 1978, Powell began her career as an Assistant District Attorney in the Western District of Texas, among other jurisdictions. She prosecuted Jimmy Chagra in 1979.

In 1988 she ceased working as a prosecutor, and in 1993 she established her own firm. She has represented various clients, especially in appellate matters. She represented executives in the Enron scandal and defended General Michael Flynn in 2019. In the weeks after the 2020 United States presidential election, she joined Trump's legal team to challenge President-elect Joe Biden's victory over Trump.

Powell has promoted numerous conspiracy theories. She has made claims of a "deep state" plot to frame Flynn, and has promoted personalities and slogans associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. More recently, Powell has alleged that a secret cabal of international Communists, Venezuelans, Cubans, Chinese, George Soros, the Clinton Foundation, "globalists", thousands of Democratic officials, as well as thousands of Republican officials such as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, have taken bribes to help rig the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden. Powell also baselessly alleges that voting machines stole the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries from Senator Bernie Sanders, and also claims that Sanders has gone along with the voting-machines conspiracy in order to profit financially.

Early life

Sidney Katherine Powell was born into a working-class family in Durham, North Carolina, grew up in the city of Raleigh. and knew from an early age that she wanted to be a lawyer. She graduated from Needham Broughton High School and went on to attend the University of North Carolina, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, funding her education with student loans. At the age of 19, she was accepted into the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she graduated in 1978 with a Juris Doctor degree. She began her legal career as the youngest Assistant United States Attorney in the US.

Legal career

From 1978 through 1988, Powell served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Western and Northern Districts of Texas and the Eastern District of Virginia, where she handled civil and criminal trial work. She was appointed Appellate Section Chief for the Western District of Texas and then the Northern District of Texas.

In 1993, Powell established her own law firm in Dallas, Texas, aimed mostly at federal appellate practice, including in the United States Supreme Court. Her firm has also handled a number of high-profile class action suits. She has served as lead counsel in more than 500 appeals in the Fifth Circuit courts, resulting in more than 18 published opinions and a reversal rate of approximately 70%.

Powell also writes and teaches in the area of federal appellate law practice, including work for the Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute of the United States Department of Justice. She is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, where she served as president from 2001 to 2002.

Notable cases

Assassination of Judge John H. Wood

In 1979 Powell was one of the prosecutors in the trial of Jimmy Chagra, where he was convicted of continuing criminal violations. Chagra was an American drug trafficker implicated in the May 1979 assassination of United States District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, Texas. In the 1970s Chagra was one of the biggest drug traffickers operating out of Las Vegas and El Paso, and according to one observer, he was "the undisputed marijuana kingpin of the Western world." Carl Pierce, a co-worker who headed up the drug trafficking unit, described it as a period where drug traffickers were "trying to kill our witnesses, assassinate our prosecutors.” According to Pierce, there were times when the government attorneys had to wear bulletproof vests and be escorted by federal marshals. Chagra was released from prison for health reasons in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 9, 2003, and reportedly placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program. He died of cancer on July 25, 2008.

Enron scandal

Powell spent nearly a decade in the 2000s representing firms and executives involved in the Enron scandal, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen and former Merrill Lynch executive Jim Brown. Enron's financial misconduct was exposed in October 2001, leading to the bankruptcy of Enron and the de facto dissolution of Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world, because of audit failures. Chief executives of Enron were indicted for a variety of charges and some were later convicted and sentenced to prison. Arthur Andersen was found guilty of illegally destroying relevant documents, which voided its license to audit public companies and effectively closed the firm. The ruling was overturned at the U.S. Supreme Court, but Arthur Andersen had already ceased operating. As a result of the scandal, new regulations and legislation were enacted to expand the accuracy of financial reporting for public companies. Some of the convictions were overturned on appeal due to legal reasons including prosecutorial misconduct. After this experience, Powell went on to write extensively about prosecutorial abuses.

Michael Flynn

In 2019, Powell publicly called on General Michael Flynn to withdraw his guilty pleas for making false statements to the FBI, and in June 2019 Flynn released his law firm of Covington & Burling and retained Powell to serve as his lead attorney. Powell's appearances on Fox News to discuss the Flynn case were noticed by President Trump, and the two spoke on several occasions. On the same day it was disclosed Flynn had fired his attorneys, Powell sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr requesting the "utmost confidentiality" and argued that Flynn's prosecution was due to "corruption of our beloved government institutions for what appears to be political purposes." Among other things, she requested that Barr appoint an outsider to investigate. Six months later, Barr appointed Jeffrey Jensen to conduct such an investigation.

In May 2020, the Justice Department filed a motion with presiding federal judge Emmett Sullivan to drop Flynn's prosecution. Sullivan did not immediately grant the motion, and Powell later requested a writ of mandamus from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to compel Sullivan to drop the case. After an initial ruling in favor of Powell by a three-judge panel of the Court, the case was appealed to the full Court, which denied the mandamus request in an 8–2 ruling, returning the case to Sullivan's court. Powell had argued to the full Court that Sullivan's role was "ministerial," giving him no discretion but to comply with the Justice Department motion, to which judge Thomas Griffith replied, "It's not ministerial and you know it's not. So it's not ministerial, so that means that the judge has to do some thinking about it, right?" Other judges on the Court also pushed back on Powell's characterization of a federal judge's role. Soon after taking the Flynn case, Powell had accused the Justice Department of prosecutorial misconduct against Flynn; in a footnote to a June 2020 court brief, the department described Powell's allegations as "unfounded and provide no basis for impugning the prosecutors from the D.C. United States Attorney's Office."

Powell has been described as a proponent of conspiracy theories about Flynn, namely that he had been framed by members of the "deep state" who were trying to eject President Donald Trump from office.

2020 presidential election

In November 2020 Powell joined President Donald Trump's legal team challenging the legality of the November presidential election results. During the days after the election, the Trump campaign filed numerous lawsuits in several states over alleged vote harvesting, illegal votes, machine errors, vote dumps and late-counted votes.

Days before the 2020 presidential election, Dennis Montgomery, a software designer with a history of making dubious claims, asserted that a government supercomputer program would be used to switch votes from Trump to Biden on voting machines. Powell promoted the false theory on Lou Dobbs's Fox Business program two days after the election, and again two days later on Maria Bartiromo's program, claiming to have "evidence that that is exactly what happened." During a subsequent appearance on Bartiromo's program, Powell baselessly alleged that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were "designed to rig elections," that family members of government officials were paid kickbacks in those states purchasing Dominion products, and linked the situation to the CIA, stating that director Gina Haspel "should be fired immediately." Christopher Krebs, a former Microsoft executive and director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), characterized the supercomputer claim as "nonsense" and a "hoax." Asserting that Krebs's analysis was "highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud," Trump fired him by tweet days later.

Powell alleged, without evidence, during a November 19 press conference that a communist plot had been engineered by Venezuela, Cuba, China, Hugo Chavez, George Soros and the Clinton Foundation to rig the election. She also alleged that Dominion "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." She also repeated an allegation made by OANN, Congressman Louis Gohmert, and others that accurate voting results had been transmitted to the German office of the Spanish firm Scytl, where they were tabulated to reveal a landslide victory for Trump, and that a company server had been seized in a raid by the United States Army. Scytl and the Army stated the allegation was false. Scytl has not had any offices operating in Germany since September 2019. Powell suggested that candidates "paid to have the system rigged to work for them." CISA described the 2020 election as "the most secure in American history," with "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised."

Powell said she had based her allegations of voter fraud in part on a comparison of votes cast and total voters registered in Michigan, from which she concluded that more people had voted than were registered to vote in Michigan. However, Powell's conclusion was erroneous, because she had mistakenly compared the Michigan vote tallies with population data from Minnesota (rather than Michigan).

On the basis of these claims, Powell called for Republican-controlled state legislatures in swing states to disregard the election results and appoint a slate of loyal electors who would vote to re-elect President Trump, based on authority putatively resting in Article Two of the Constitution.

Some sources including Politico and The New York Times have described Powell's unsubstantiated claims about election interference as promulgation of conspiracy theories.

Writing

Powell has written opinion pieces for The New York Observer, The Daily Caller, The Hill, Fox News, and other news outlets. She has published two books:

• Powell, Sidney K. (May 1, 2014). Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. Brown Books. ISBN 978-1-61254-149-5. OCLC 870288205.
• Powell, Sidney K.; Silverglate, Harvey A. (February 18, 2020). Conviction Machine: Standing Up to Federal Prosecutorial Abuse. Encounter Books. ISBN 978-1-59403-803-7. OCLC 1104857327.

In addition, Powell has published several journal articles on law practice. Examples include:

• Powell, Sidney (1988). "Federal Jurisdiction in Criminal Appeals—Appealable Orders in the Fifth Circuit". Texas Tech Law Review. 19 (3): 1003–1028.
• Powell, Sidney (1990). "Federal Appeals in the Fifth Circuit: Tips for the Texas Practitioner". Baylor Law Review. 42 (1): 97–140.
• Gabriel, Henry D; Powell, Sidney (1994). Federal Appellate Practice Guide: Fifth Circuit. Rochester, New York: Lawyers Cooperative Publishing. OCLC 30772185.

Film and media career

Powell has made numerous media appearances both as a political and legal commentator and as a published writer on the subject of law. She has appeared on television shows including Lou Dobbs Tonight, Hannity, Shannon Bream's show, Newsmax TV, and One America News, as well as on various radio shows.

Powell served as producer on the drama Decoding Annie Parker (2013), providing guidance to help bring the film to a commercial release. The film tells the story of Annie Parker and the discovery of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene. The film went on to raise millions of dollars for cancer charities.

Powell appeared in the cast of The Plot Against the President (2020), a documentary film directed by Amanda Milius and based on the book of the same title by journalist Lee Smith. The film examines circumstances leading up to the 2016 United States Presidential election, the subsequent transition of power, and events that transpired after President Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017.

Personal life

Powell has a son from a former marriage. She has participated in volunteer work for women's shelters and other charities.

QAnon

Powell has been described by some sources as a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a far-right conspiracy theory which alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against President Donald Trump, who is fighting the cabal. However, despite having retweeted major QAnon accounts and catchphrases and appearing on QAnon shows on YouTube, Powell has denied knowledge of QAnon.

References

1. "Powell, Sidney K." Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
2. ^ Kloor, Keith. "The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn's Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy". POLITICO. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
3. ^ "Michael Flynn hires Dallas lawyer Sidney Powell, a conspiracy theorist who calls Mueller a 'creep'". Dallas News. June 12, 2019. Archived from the original on November 17, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
4. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-attorney-sidney-powell-im-going-to-blow-up-georgia-with-new-lawsuit
5. Walsh, Joe (November 20, 2020). "Who Is Sidney Powell? Meet Trump's New Top Conspiracy Theorist". Forbes. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
6. Bump, Philip. "Here's how seriously you should take the Trump legal team's conspiracy theories". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
7. ^ Qiu, Linda (November 19, 2020). "How Sidney Powell inaccurately cited Venezuela's elections as evidence of U.S. fraud". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on November 19, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
8. "Sidney Powell: Mueller Report Meets the Rule of Law". Archived from the original on November 14, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
9. "Commencement 1978". Retrieved November 15, 2020.
10. ^ "Sidney K. Powell". Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
11. ^ "Sidney Powell P.C." Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
12. Knapp, George (March 19, 2007). "The Pot King of the Western World". Las Vegas City Life. Archived from the original on May 26, 2009. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
13. "Jamiel A. Chagra, 63, Drug Kingpin, Dies"". New York Times. July 29, 2008. Archived from the original on March 25, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
14. Wisenberg, S.L. (October 27, 2014). "Too Much Skin in the Game? A Review of Sidney Powell's Licensed To Lie". Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
15. Bratton, William W. (May 2002). "Does Corporate Law Protect the Interests of Shareholders and Other Stakeholders?: Enron and the Dark Side of Shareholder Value". Tulane Law Review (1275). New Orleans: Tulane University Law School. SSRN 301475.
16. Ayala, Astrid; Giancarlo Ibárgüen, Snr (March 2006). "A Market Proposal for Auditing the Financial Statements of Public Companies" (PDF). Journal of Management of Value. Universidad Francisco Marroquín: 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 18, 2010. Retrieved October 17, 2010.
17. Kloor, Keith (January 17, 2020). "The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn's Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy". Politico. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
18. Powell, Sidney (June 6, 2019). "Letter to William Barr re Internal review, Brady, IG Report, Declassification, and Lt. General Michael Flynn (retired)" (PDF). Sidney Powell, P.C. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 4, 2019. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
19. Mazzetti, Mark; Savage, Charlie; Goldman, Adam (June 28, 2020). "How Michael Flynn's Defense Team Found Powerful Allies". Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020 – via NYTimes.com.
20. CNN, Katelyn Polantz. "Justice Department drops criminal case against Michael Flynn". CNN. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
21. "Full D.C. Circuit Court Rejects Michael Flynn's Emergency Petition for Immediate Dismissal of Criminal Case". Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
22. "Appeals court seems wary of ordering dismissal of Flynn case". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
23. "'That's Not True and You Know It,' Federal Judge Tells DOJ Lawyer in Flynn Matter". August 11, 2020. Archived from the original on November 17, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
24. "United States v. Michael T. Flynn, Crim. No. 17-232 (D.D.C. 2020) - Government's Response to Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae, the Honorable John Gleeson (Ret.)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
25. "Trump legal team to file new ballot lawsuits". November 8, 2020. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
26. "Fact check: TV news clip does not show 'live computerized fraud' on Election Day 2020". Reuters. November 10, 2020. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
27. Fichera, Angelo; Spencer, Saranac Hale (November 13, 2020). "Bogus Theory Claims Supercomputer Switched Votes in Election". FactCheck.org. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
28. "Sidney Powell Connects CIA to Dominion Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theory". November 15, 2020. Archived from the original on November 17, 2020. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
29. ^ Fichera, Angelo; Spencer, Saranac Hale (November 13, 2020). "Bogus Theory Claims Supercomputer Switched Votes in Election". Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
30. ^ "Repudiating Trump, officials say election 'most secure'". AP NEWS. November 13, 2020. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
31. CNN, Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc. "Trump fires director of Homeland Security agency who had rejected President's election conspiracy theories". CNN. Archived from the original on November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
32. ^ Bump, Philip. "Analysis | Here's how seriously you should take the Trump legal team's conspiracy theories". Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020 – via www.washingtonpost.com.
33. Sherman, Jake; Palmer, Anna; Ross, Garrett; Okun, Eli. "POLITICO Playbook PM: Rudy". POLITICO. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
34. CNN, Tara Subramaniam, Holmes Lybrand and CNN staff. "Fact checking Giuliani and the Trump legal team's wild, fact-free press conference". CNN. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
35. Joffe-Block, Jude (November 14, 2020). "False reports claim election servers were seized in Germany". AP News.
36. "Scytl strongly denies the false information related to the U.S. elections". Scytl. November 13, 2020. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
37. Roose, Kevin (November 18, 2020). "No, the Army didn't seize a German server showing a Trump landslide". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
38. Vella, Lauren (November 19, 2020). "Ernst: Trump lawyer claim that candidates pay to rig elections 'absolutely outrageous'". TheHill. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
39. Blake, Aaron (November 20, 2020). "The Trump campaign's much-hyped affidavit features a big, glaring error". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
40. Smith, David (November 21, 2020). "Trump makes futile last stand to overturn results as Georgia certifies Biden win". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
41. "Sidney Powell: "The entire election, frankly, in all the swing states should be overturned and the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump"". Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
42. ^ Porter, Tom. "An attorney leading Trump's attempt to subvert the election results is a longtime QAnon supporter". Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
43. Blake, Aaron (November 19, 2020). "Trump's legal team lights a fuse beneath its remaining credibility". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
44. Peters, Jeremy W. (November 20, 2020). "Tucker Carlson Dared Question a Trump Lawyer. The Backlash Was Quick". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
45. Mustafa, Filiz. "WHO IS SIDNEY POWELL?". Archived from the original on November 17, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
46. "Sidney Powell". Archived from the original on November 14, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
47. "Review of Licensed to Lie". Kirkus Reviews. April 29, 2014. Archived from the original on May 26, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
48. "About". Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
49. Samantha Highfill (May 2, 2014). "Meet the woman behind 'Decoding Annie Parker'". Archived from the original on December 27, 2014. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
50. McNary, Dave (December 4, 2013). "Samantha Morton-Helen Hunt's 'Decoding Annie Parker' Gets U.S. Distribution". Variety. Archived from the original on August 17, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
51. "Trailer For The New Pro-Trump Russiagate Documentary: The Plot Against The President". Archived from the original on September 4, 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
52. ^ Gilbert, David (November 20, 2020). "Trump's Lawyer Sidney Powell Is Hardcore QAnon". Vice. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
53. Roose, Kevin (August 28, 2020). "What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 22, 2020. Retrieved October 4, 2020.

External links

• Official website

• 1955 births
• 20th-century American lawyers
• 20th-century American women writers
• 21st-century American lawyers
• 21st-century American women writers
• American conspiracy theorists
• American political writers
• Living people
• People from Dallas
• People from Durham, North Carolina
• People from Raleigh, North Carolina
• Texas lawyers
• Texas Republicans
• University of North Carolina alumni
• University of North Carolina School of Law alumni
• Writers from North Carolina