Former Trump and Kraken lawyer Sydney Powell argued vehemently that her efforts at trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election were akin to "the lawyers who argued Brown v Board of Education" as she defiantly defended herself and fellow ambulance chaser Lin Wood from potential sanctions in a Federal Court in Michigan.
At issue is the question of whether Powell or Wood did the legal work necessary before filing their case that included 200 affidavits of people who claim they witnessed election irregularities. The irregularities were mostly from people who simply don't understand the process of tabulating an election.
While many of the accounts have been discredited or explained, the legal team, which referred to themselves as "The Kraken," didn't do their job to question the claims. Throughout the course of the six-hour court proceeding, the federal judge argued that the lawyers have a responsibility to present information that has been well researched, is truthful and accurate.
Instead, Powell responded with this:
"It is the duty of lawyers of the highest tradition of the practice law to raise difficult and even unpopular issues. The fact that there may have been adverse precedent against us does not change that fact. Were that true, there would not have been a decision called Brown v. Board of Education. We have practiced law with the highest standards. We would file the same complaints again," said Powell.
So after filing a set of fraudulent affidavits Powell is not contrite, no apologetic, not penitent but instead defiant and haughty arguing that her efforts were as important and worthy as those who were able to strike down the segregational doctrine of “Separate but Equal” which was established in the unfortunate Plessy decision by famed NAACP lawyer — and eventual Supreme Court Justice — Thurgood Marshall.
Really man?
Fellow lawyers have found this behavior problematic.
Raffi Melkonian, a Houston-based partner at the law firm of Wright, Close & Barger LLP, observed on Twitter that Powell's total lack of contrition could seriously come back to bite her when it comes time for U.S. District Judge Linda Parker to potentially level sanctions against her.
"I want to note: there was not a word I heard in the hearing... where a single one of these people apologized for their conduct," he wrote. "They could have said, 'we were proceeding in good faith, but we understand it went off the rails.' That's not a good answer, but it's something you can see in the face of such a situation. You can ask for forgiveness. You can explain how you ended up in this mess."
Melkonian concluded by describing Powell's defiance as "tremendously ill advised."
Frankly, this response by Powell is an upgrade from when they previously claimed that “reasonable people couldn't be expected to believe them.”
Attorneys for Sidney Powell are asking a federal judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed against her, claiming that “no reasonable person” thought the pro-Trump lawyer’s statements about the 2020 election results were factual.
Dominion Voting Systems in January sued Powell over her statements alleging the voting company helped rig the election against then-President Donald Trump. In a motion to dismiss filed Monday, Powell’s attorneys wrote that a judge must determine whether her statements could be proved and if “reasonable people” would believe they were factual, given the context and other factors surrounding the comments.
“Analyzed under these factors, and even assuming, arguendo, that each of the statements alleged in the complaint could be proved true or false, no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact,” the filing reads.
Even when they were filing these suits lawyers at the RNC were laughing at them.
The Republican National Committee's top lawyer said that the elections lawsuits filed by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis were doomed to get thrown out of court -- and he advised against the RNC getting involved.
The Washington Post reports that RNC chief counsel Justin Riemer wrote in an email to former GOP spokeswoman Liz Harrington that Trump allies' desperate bids to keep him in the White House were a "joke" that had no chance of success.
"What Rudy and Jenna are doing is a joke and they are getting laughed out of court," he wrote. "They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing."
[...]
"The email from Riemer to Harrington came about six weeks before Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and it shows that key figures in the party were privately disturbed by the false claims being made about the election by Trump and his supporters — even if they did not say so publicly," the Post reports.
Powell and Wood are currently looking at sanctions but at this rate — like Rudy Giuliani who has had his license to practice law temporarily rescinded in New York and DC — they could soon find themselves as “ex-lawyers" based on their egregious behavor.
I have no expectation that at Luddite like Powell even knows who Thurgood Marshall actually is, or anything about his history. Gloming onto landmark Civil Rights legislation -- which championing a set of lawsuits that directly challenge the right to vote by minorities — is exactly the kind of reality-bending pretense to be expected from conservatives these days.
They repeatedly love to paint themselves as the hero, when time and time again — they are the villain.