Oh, stuff it

i have the kraken, it’s right here in my pocket! I do have it, I do!

Sidney Powell: “no reasonable person would have believed my lies”

Donald Trump's former lawyer Sidney Powell has claimed that 'no reasonable person' would believe her allegations about voting fraud were 'statements of fact', as she sought to dismiss a $1.3 billion defamation suit against her.

Powell, 65, was sued by Dominion Voting Systems in January for her assertions that the election was stolen from Trump, via rigged ballot machinery provided by the company. 

She and Rudy Giuliani, another of the former president's lawyers, claimed that the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez had concocted a plot that would enable Dominion's machines to switch votes, and that this system was used against Trump.

On Monday, Powell's attorneys attempted to get the charges [sic — it’s a civil, not a criminal action] against her dismissed by a judge in Washington DC.

Her attorneys argued that 'reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process.'

We’re all familiar with the lawyer who, walking out of police headquarters with his just-bonded client who’d been caught in a bedroom, pants around his ankles and in the company of a six-year-old girl, telling reporters that “my client looks forward to his day in court, where he’ll be fully vindicated”. Hell, that’s what lawyers do — I remember once when Gideon … oh, never mind — it’s just what lawyers are expected to say when defending the indefensible.

But Powell went way beyond that, asserting as fact that she had irrefutable evidence that would prove election fraud, and repeatedly promised to produce it. I believed her the first time because she was a high-powered D.C. lawyer with a stellar reputation. I lost that faith when her revelation dates came and went, with no proof. And when she declined Tucker Carlson’s invitation to produce her “proof” that the ballot machines had been manipulated, I was done with her.

Which is too bad; I still have no doubt that the election was stolen, but Powell’s false promises to prove that were disastrously harmful to the cause; as damaging as the 600 rioters who invaded the Capitol. Both gave the media the opening to cover-over the fraud and the illegitimacy of what their masters had pulled off.