Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

They promoted Trump's election lies. Now they're running for office
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/11/21/trump-election-lie-promoters-running-for-office-brown-ftr-nr-vpx.cnn

[Rick Plant]

Why Trump appears deeply unnerved as Capitol attack investigation closes in
Flurry of recent revelations raises the specter that the committee is swiftly heading towards an incriminating conclusion



Donald Trump is increasingly agitated by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, according to sources familiar with the matter, and appears anxious he might be implicated in the sprawling inquiry into the insurrection even as he protests his innocence.

The former president in recent weeks has complained more about the investigation, demanding why his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, shared so much material about 6 January with the select committee, and why dozens of other aides have also cooperated.

Trump has also been perturbed by aides invoking the Fifth Amendment in depositions - it makes them look weak and complicit in a crime, he has told associates - and considers them foolish for not following the lead of his former strategist Steve Bannon in simply ignoring the subpoenas.

When Trump sees new developments in the Capitol attack investigation on television, he has started swearing about the negative coverage and bemoaned that the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, was too incompetent to put Republicans on the committee to defend him.

The former president’s anger largely mirrors the kind of expletives he once directed at the Russia inquiry and the special counsel investigation when he occupied the White House. But the rapidly accelerating investigation into whether Trump and top aides unlawfully conspired to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory at the 6 January joint session appears to be unnerving him deeply.

The portrait that emerges from interviews with multiple sources close to Trump, including current and former aides, suggest a former president unmoored and backed into a corner by the rapid escalation in intensity of the committee’s investigation.

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

But as Trump struggles to shield himself from the select committee, with public hearings next year and the justice department said to be tracking the investigation, the path ahead is only likely to be more treacherous.

The former president is especially attuned to his potential for legal exposure, even as he maintains he did nothing wrong in conferring about ways to overturn the 2020 election and encouraging supporters to march on the Capitol. He has expressed alarm to associates about repeated defeats in court as he seeks to stop the select committee obtaining some of the most sensitive of White House documents about 6 January from the National Archives, on grounds of executive privilege.

The reality is that with each passing day, the committee seems to be gathering new evidence about Trump’s culpability around the Capitol attack that might culminate with recommendations for new election laws – but also for prosecutions.

"I think that the justice department will keep a keen eye on what evidence the committee has accumulated, as well as looking out for witnesses for a potential case,” said Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense now a law professor at New York University.

“One of the outcomes of the committee’s work and the public hearings will be to demonstrate individuals who might be wanting to come forward as witnesses and that’s got to be very important to justice department prosecutors,” Goodman said.

House investigators are expected to soon surpass more than 300 interviews with Trump administration officials and Trump political operatives as part of a process that has yielded 30,000 documents and 250 tips via the select committee’s tip line.

The flurry of recent revelations – such as the disclosure of Meadows’s connection to a powerpoint outlining how Trump could stage a coup, as first reported by the Guardian – raises the specter that the select committee is swiftly heading towards an incriminating conclusion.

Trump’s associates insist they are not worried, at least for the moment, since the select committee has yet to obtain materials covered by executive privilege either through Meadows or the National Archives that could ensnare Trump personally.

The former president’s defenders are correct in that respect – the committee does not have messages that show Trump directing an attack on the Capitol, one source said – and Trump has vowed to appeal the National Archives case to the supreme court.

But no one outside the select committee, which is quietly making progress from a glass office on Capitol Hill with boarded-up windows and electronically secured doors, knows exactly what it has uncovered and whether the inquiry ends with a criminal referral.

The material Meadows turned over alone depicts an alarming strategy to stop Biden’s certification on 6 January, involving nearly the entire federal government and lieutenants operating from the Willard hotel in Washington.

One member on the select committee described the events around 6 January as showing a coalescence of multiple strategies: “There was a DoJ strategy, a state legislative strategy, a state election official strategy, the vice-president strategy. And there was the insurrection strategy.”

The text messages Meadows received on his personal phone implicate Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, and Republican members of Congress. Texts Meadows turned over to the committee might also be used by an enterprising prosecutor as evidence of criminal obstruction to stop a congressional proceeding if the White House knew election fraud claims to be lies but still used them to stop Biden’s certification.

While Meadows never testified about the communications, a cadre of top Trump officials, from former acting national security adviser Keith Kellogg to Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short, have moved to cooperate with House investigators.

The trouble for Trump – and part of the source of his frustration, the sources said – is his inability, out of office, to wield the far-reaching power of the executive branch to affect the course of the inquiry.

The limited success of strategies he hoped would stymie the committee – ordering aides to defy subpoenas or launching legal challenges to slow-walk the release White House records – has been jarring for Trump.

“I think what he’s finding is that as the ex-president, he has a lot less authority than he did as president. But his playbook doesn’t work if he’s not president,” said Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel in the first House impeachment inquiry into Trump.

In a reflection of dwindling legal avenues available to undercut the investigation, Trump has returned to launching attacks-by-emailed-statement on the select committee, stewing over his predicament and what he considers an investigation designed only to hurt him politically.

“The Unselect Committee itself is Rigged, stacked with Never Trumpers, Republican enemies, and two disgraced RINOs, Cheney and Kinzinger, who couldn’t get elected ‘dog catcher’ in their districts,” Trump vented last month.

In private, Trump is said to have reserved the brunt of his scorn for Meadows, furious with his former White House chief of staff for sharing sensitive communications on top of all the unflattering details about Trump included in his book this month.

Trump’s associates, however, have focused more on questioning the legitimacy of the select committee and its composition, arguing the fact that the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, appointed both Republican members reduces the investigation to a partisan political endeavor.

They also argue that none of the revelations to date – like the Guardian’s reporting on Trump’s call to the Willard hotel, during which he pressed operatives to stop Biden’s certification from taking place entirely – amounts to criminal wrongdoing.

But in the meantime, Trump is left with little choice but to wait for the committee’s report.

“The justice department seems to be more reactive than proactive,” Goodman said. “They might be waiting for the committee to wrap up its work to make criminal referrals.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/capitol-attack-investigation-closes-in-trump

[Rick Plant]

Trump's latest remarks about Israel should alarm American Jews: columnist

Donald Trump's remarks about Israel are just another example that he's no real friend to Jewish people.

The twice-impeached one-term president bashed American Jews who didn't vote for him, and praised the evangelical Christians who did, while indulging in some anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish people controlling certain institutions, reported MSNBC columnist Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

"American Jews who continue to support Trump and the GOP might take a cue from the experiences of Italian Jews under fascism," Ben-Ghiat wrote. "Many of them supported Benito Mussolini for years, thinking he was the 'good' authoritarian — he persecuted other groups, but not them, unlike Hitler — only to be hit in 1938 with il Duce's antisemitic legislation and forced into ruin or exile. They learned the hard way that once violence becomes legitimized in a country, the roster of 'enemies of the people' inevitably expands."

Trump's daughter and son-in-law are observant Jews, and he has enjoyed the support of Orthodox Jews, but his pro-Israel stance was always more about securing evangelical votes than supporting Jewish people.

"Jews around the world should see Trump's loyalty to Israel and his alliances with Israeli politicians as similarly situational and act accordingly," Ben-Ghiat wrote. "Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli prime minister. He enjoyed a good relationship with Trump — until he congratulated President Joe Biden on his election victory. 'I haven't spoken to him since,' Trump told Ravid. 'F--- him.'"


Georgia GOP 'goes all-in on Trump's Big Lie'

Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller is pushing to eliminate all absentee ballot drop boxes in the state, only months after he voted to install them.

Miller, the No. 2 Republican in the state Senate and a candidate for lieutenant governor, has introduced Senate Bill 325, which would eliminate drop boxes, a focal point among pro-Trump Republicans who ginned up unfounded fears about mail-in voting. The state's election board approved the use of drop boxes amid the pandemic last year.

"Drop boxes were introduced as an emergency measure during the pandemic but many counties did not follow the security guidelines in place, such as the requirement for camera surveillance on every drop box," Miller said in a statement. "Moving forward, we can return to a pre-pandemic normal of voting in person. Removing drop boxes will help rebuild the trust that has been lost. Many see them as the weak link when it comes to securing our elections against fraud. For the small number of Georgians who need to vote absentee, that will remain as easy and accessible as it was before 2020."

Voting rights groups accused Miller of "going all-in on the Big Lie."

"Instead of figuring out how to put together policies that will help our people, he is preemptively erecting barriers to voting a year out," Stephanie Ali, policy director at the New Georgia Project, said in a statement, arguing that Miller's proposal shows he is "terrified" of the state's changing demographics after Republicans got swept in the last round of statewide races.

Election officials around the country have warned that proposals like Miller's will make it more difficult to vote, particularly for voters of color.

"Efforts like Sen. Miller's to remove drop boxes or place other restrictions on voting are not about election security, but part of a national coordinated attack on democracy," Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, told Salon. "Nationwide, the voter suppression proposals and laws disproportionately affect people of color and working people — these are the voices extreme lawmakers are trying to suppress to tip future elections in their favor. Candidates should win by running good campaigns, not by undemocratically taking away Americans' freedoms."

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who has pushed back against false GOP election claims and Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his loss, rejected Miller's claim that every county did not have video surveillance, noting that officials had identified only one irregularity: a woman who cast a ballot one minute after the deadline.

"This office and I have worked very hard on making sure we have integrity up and down the line," he told WSB-TV.

On Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that helped the GOP write a slew of new voting restrictions, ranked Georgia No. 1 in the country on "election integrity," including the new drop boxes.

"It means that we're a leader in voter integrity and also security," Raffensperger told the news outlet.

Georgia Democrats called out Miller for pushing the proposal after he said in a recent interview that newly-arrived Georgians "need to assimilate into our values and our culture."

"Butch Miller's proposal to blow up our elections based on lies is part of his sad, desperate attempt to win over far-right voters after Donald Trump endorsed his primary opponent," Scott Hogan, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said in a statement. "We already know Butch Miller is terrified of Georgia's diversifying electorate — now, he's trying to silence the voters of color who elected Democrats last cycle by banning one of the most popular ways they chose to cast their ballots."

Just months earlier, Miller joined other Georgia Republicans in supporting Senate Bill 202, a sweeping set of voting restrictions that codified the use of drop boxes, even while restricting their availability. But Miller now faces an opponent endorsed by Trump, and appears intent on trying to win over Trump supporters after the former president accused him of not doing enough to try to overturn his election defeat. Repeated reviews and investigations have found no evidence of fraud or widespread irregularities in Georgia — or for that matter in any other state.

"Trump's grip on the Republican Party is clear: he has made endorsing the Big Lie a litmus test for his support," Griswold said. "Now, hundreds of candidates running under the GOP banner at the county, state and federal levels have promoted lies about the 2020 elections. We need lawmakers and election administrators who will respect voters and their decisions at the ballot box, even if they don't like the outcome. That is how democracy works."

Miller is running to replace Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who opted not to run for re-election after spending much of the year battling election conspiracy theories from his own party. Duncan has said that he does not think anything should be done about drop boxes.

"I'm one of those Republicans that want more people to vote," he said earlier this year.

An analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Georgia Public Broadcasting earlier this year found that heavily Democratic counties like Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett were far more likely to use the drop boxes than Republican areas. More than 305,000 of about 547,000 absentee ballots in the metro Atlanta area were cast using drop boxes, compared to just 32% of the absentee votes in 11 smaller countries.

"This legislation is nothing more than a last-ditch attempt to further undermine faith in the results of the 2020 election and win support with those who simply cannot accept that they lost," Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said in a statement. "Our absentee ballot drop boxes were safe and secure — three counts of the vote and monitors from the Secretary of State's office proves that."

Georgia has already restricted the use of drop boxes. Though SB 202 required each county to have at least one drop box per 100,000 active voters, they must now be located inside early voting sites and can only be accessible during early voting days and hours. Voting rights advocates accused Republicans of seeking to "limit options in the metro areas versus the rural areas" where Republicans tend to do better.

Miller's proposal comes ahead of two high-profile elections in the state next year. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., the state's first Black senator, is up for re-election and appears likely to face Trump favorite Herschel Walker, a former NFL star. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who has rejected Trump's election fraud claims, is set to take on Trump-endorsed former Sen. David Perdue in the GOP primary, ahead of a potential rematch with former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who refused to concede her race in 2018 after accusing Kemp of voter suppression. Abrams has charged that Georgia Republicans' crackdown on ballot access is a "redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie" targeting Black voters.

SB 202 is already having noticeable effects on the state's elections. Rejected absentee ballot requests rose 400% in November's municipal elections after the state-imposed new restrictions, and 52% of rejected applications were denied because they were submitted after the state's new deadline, which requires voters to request ballots at least 11 days before an election. State lawmakers have also used the new law to replace local election officials with their own picks, often replacing Black Democrats with white conservatives.

Griswold said laws like SB 202 are part of the "worst attack on democracy in recent history." She called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation in response to the ballot access crackdown, urging the Senate to reform the filibuster because "American democracy is more important than antiquated Senate rules." While the Senate has renewed its focus on voting rights amid increasingly aggressive Republican gerrymandering, which threatens the Democratic House majority, conservative Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have ruled out any changes to the filibuster.

"Access to the ballot box shouldn't be dependent on voters' zip code, political party or the amount of money in their bank account. Every eligible American deserves to have their voice heard and their vote counted," Griswold said. "Congress needs to do its job and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act as soon as possible to combat this historic wave of voter suppression."

https://www.rawstory.com/georgia-gop-goes-all-in-on-big-lie/

[Rick Plant]

These people are insane. This Qanon cult is Trump's base and they are responsible for the COVID disaster we have today because they refuse to get vaccinated but have no problem drinking bleach like their orange messiah told them to do.   

QAnon cultists are now drinking bleach compound from communal bowl: 'Immediately evokes images of Jonestown'



QAnon cultists gathered in Dallas have started drinking an industrial disinfectant mixed into a chemical cocktail.

Family members of a Delaware woman who left her husband and children to await John F. Kennedy's return have confirmed that she's drinking the chemical mixture containing chlorine dioxide from a communal bowl, in a rite that cult researchers find extremely alarming, reported the Dallas Observer.

The woman's family said she has personally mixed up the cocktail and distributed it to group members.

"She was proud to tell us that she was the one mixing it up and giving it to everybody," one relative said.

Chlorine dioxide, which is similar to bleach, is dangerous to ingest in large quantities, and Food and Drug Administration issued a warning just weeks into the pandemic warning against the chemical's use to treat the coronavirus, but some conspiracy theorists continue to sell the product as a cure for COVID-19.

"A group of people in a cult drinking a communal substance is definitely not something to mess around with and is extremely concerning," Rothschild said.

It's not clear why the group started drinking the cocktail, and group leader Michael Brian Protzman could not be reached for comment.

News of the chemical punch bowl comes as the cult appears to be building towards another predicted climactic and apocalyptic moment.

They first came to Dallas over a month ago, following Protzman's prediction that President John F. Kennedy would reappear at the exact spot in Downtown Dallas where he was assassinated in 1963. From there, Kennedy would set in motion the execution of QAnon's supposed underground network of liberal, satan-worshipping child s**-traffickers and reinstate Donald Trump as president.

After Kennedy no-showed at two predicted appearances in November, dozens of Protzman's followers remained in Dallas. It's unclear what they're waiting for or what Protzman has planned next.

The chemical cocktail is a bad sign.

"This feels like a progression," said Mike Rothschild, whose book The Storm is Upon Us documents the rise of the QAnon movement. "It immediately evokes images of Jonestown and Heaven's Gate." (More than 900 people, many of them children, died in a mass murder suicide at the Jonestown commune in Guyana in 1978. Thirty-nine followers of the Heaven' Gate cult died in a mass suicide outside San Diego in 1997.)

Neither the Dallas Police Department nor the FBI Field office in Dallas could be reached for comment. Dallas PD has previously said they have had limited contact with the group.

"A group of people in a cult drinking a communal substance is definitely not something to mess around with and is extremely concerning," Rothschild said.

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-qanon-cult-members-are-drinking-toxic-chemicals-en-masse-13038506

[Rick Plant]

Donald Trump is 'freaking out' -- and with good reason: MSNBC legal analyst



Former Solicitor General Neal Katyal explained to MSNBC on Monday that former President Donald Trump is in an awkward place with his legal problems where he's quickly running out of options.

"When you have [Adam] Kinzinger saying, [Rep. Liz] Cheney saying they are looking at crimes, what crimes are possible?" asked Alecia Manendez.

Katyal explained that the major crime is the 18 US Code 1505, obstructing an official proceeding.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to learn Donald Trump today is, to use the technical legal term, freaking out," he mocked. "He is freaking out because of the revelations that you just mentioned a moment ago. Also because there was a decision ten days ago by the federal court in Washington, D.C. by a Trump appointee and what the judge said is that one of the insurrectionists was guilty of violating this statute obstruction of an official proceeding, the count of votes on Jan. 6."

He noted that the judge also explained that the insurrectionist clearly intended to try and stop the count and that it doesn't require a lawyer proving the person did or didn't intend violence. With or without violence, the person acted with corrupt intent to stop the counting of votes. That, he explained, is the manual for prosecuting Trump.

"That is what he is worried about and why you see all of these moves by Trump and his allies today," Katyal said.

Trump as a normal citizen doesn't have any authority, which is another problem for him. His normal playbook doesn't work if he's not the one in control.

"Our entire constitutional system is set up to basically trust presidents and give them immense powers even to delay litigation or court cases against themselves because we don't want random people to tie up the president and stop the nation's business from being done," Katyal said. "That is why our system was written as it is. It wasn't written for someone like Donald Trump who abuses every lever in the system to delay, obstruct, and prevent things. That is one thing when you're president. You got that suite of tools available. He doesn't have them anymore."

See the full conversation below:

[Rick Plant]

Letitia James cuts Trump's new lawsuit off at the knees: He doesn't get to 'dictate' where he will answer for his actions



New York attorney general Letitia James responded to Donald Trump's latest attempt to escape accountability.

The twice-impeached one-term president filed a lawsuit Monday against the attorney general, arguing that James had violated his civil rights by issuing subpoenas to him, his family and his business, and identified Trump as both the president and a private citizen.

“The Trump Organization has continually sought to delay our investigation into its business dealings and now Donald Trump and his namesake company have filed a lawsuit as an attempted collateral attack on that investigation," James said in a statement. "To be clear, neither Mr. Trump nor the Trump Organization get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions. Our investigation will continue undeterred because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump.”

The former president has repeatedly attacked James as her office investigates potential fraud at his family-owned Trump Organization, and James has called on Trump to give a deposition on Jan. 7.

https://www.rawstory.com/letitia-james-trump-organization-2656076388/

[Rick Plant]

Liz Cheney 'let the cat out of the bag' that criminal referral could come for Trump: NYTimes reporter

According to Schmidt, the idea that the committee was thinking of criminal referrals came last week when Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) cited 18 US Code 1505, which makes it illegal to obstruct government operations.

The reporter on Monday talked with MSNBC's Chris Hayes about the latest developments in the committee's probe.

"Look, whatever they have, whatever they know, it was enough for Liz Cheney to go out and say what she did in these past few weeks where she read from the criminal code," said Schmidt. "I think this committee wants to be taken seriously. They wanted this to appear like it's a bipartisan effort that is following the facts. Going out there and reading the criminal code is one of the more aggressive things that a congressional committee that has no powers can do."

Schmidt then explained why this statement went beyond mere headline-grabbing political theater.

"What we learned is there was work underneath those statements," he said. "It was no accident she was saying it. The investigation has former federal prosecutors working on this. They don't want to be embarrassed by sending some sort of frivolous letter to the Justice Department that would be ignored. They would want this to be a truly serious thing."

He explained that the committee was designed to give the most authoritative report on what happened Jan. 6. The evidence is what has led them to the possibilities of criminal referrals.

"Cheney let the cat out of the bag on this the last few weeks where she publicly read from the criminal code," Schmidt continued. "We went back and did some reporting to sort of look at the extent that the committee is looking at this issue, the two biggest issues, the ones that you laid out. Look, a criminal referral has no real legal weight, but what it would do is it would possibly change the pressure on Attorney General [Merrick] Garland. The attorney general has been able to largely skate without having to address the question of whether Donald Trump is being investigated and if he's not being investigated, why not."

Garland has managed to stay above the fray but with the Bannon indictment, it is clear that the DOJ is publicly involved in the probe now. As Figliuzzi explained, the two aren't operating in a vacuum and are likely coordinating their evidence.

See the interview below:

[Rick Plant]

Fox News’ Legal Woes Worsen as Judge Allows Dominion Election Lies Lawsuit to Proceed

Judge Eric Davis wrote that the complaint supports the idea that network either knew or had a high degree of awareness that it was pushing conspiracy theories about voting machine fraud

A lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems seeking $1.6 billion in damages from Fox News over its coverage of the 2020 election can proceed, a Delaware state judge ruled on Thursday.

Judge Eric Davis noted in his 52-page opinion that Dominion’s complaint “supports the reasonable inference that Fox either (i) knew its statements about Dominion’s role in election fraud were false or (ii) had a high degree of awareness that the statements were false.”

Dominion is alleging that Fox News hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Sean Hannity gave Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani a platform to lie about the voting process. While being deposed for the case, Powell and Giuliani basically admitted they didn’t really care whether the claims they were spouting were true. “It’s not my job in a fast-moving case to go out and investigate every piece of evidence that’s given to me,” said Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney. “Otherwise, you’re never going to write a story. You’re never going to come to a conclusion.”

Because of this sloppy work — if it’s even considered work at all — Dobbs, Bartiromo, and Hannity ended up having to air a fact-check package debunking lies pushed by themselves and their guests. The package was spurred by a legal threat by voting technology company Smartmatic, whose software Powell falsely claimed was “created by Hugo Chavez.”

Fox News taking this measure implies it recognized that impending election lawsuits could get ugly. Thursday’s ruling implies they were right.

While the case proceeds, Dominion is still seeing potential consequences of Fox News’ lies. A small Nevada county that former President Trump won with nearly 80 percent of the vote in last year’s election on Thursday decided to spend $223,000 to throw out Dominion’s machines. The county will shell out another $69,000 to install, maintain, and train workers to use new ones.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fox-news-dominion-voting-systems-lawsuit-can-proceed-1273090/


Revealed: how Sidney Powell could be disbarred for lying in court for Trump

The former lawyer filed cases across America for the former president, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 election

Sidney Powell, the former lawyer for Donald Trump who filed lawsuits across the US for the former president, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, has on several occasions represented to federal courts that people were co-counsel or plaintiffs in her cases without seeking their permission to do so, the Guardian has learned.

Some of these individuals say that they found out that Powell had named them only once the cases were already filed.

During this same period of time, Powell also named several other lawyers – with their permission in those instances – as co-counsel in her election-related cases, despite the fact that they played virtually no role in bringing or litigating those cases.

Both Powell’s naming of other people as plaintiffs or co-counsel without their consent and representing that other attorneys were central to her cases when, in fact, their roles were nominal or nonexistent, constitute serious potential violations of the American Bar Association model rules for professional conduct, top legal ethicists told the Guardian.

Powell’s misrepresentations to the courts in those particular instances often aided fundraising for her non-profit, Defending the Republic. Powell had told prospective donors that the attorneys were integral members of an “elite strike force” who had played outsized roles in her cases – when in fact they were barely involved if at all.

Powell did not respond to multiple requests for comment via phone, email, and over social media.

The State Bar of Texas is already investigating Powell for making other allegedly false and misleading statements to federal courts by propagating increasingly implausible conspiracy theories to federal courts that Joe Biden’s election as president of the United States was illegitimate.

The Texas bar held its first closed-door hearing regarding the allegations about Powell on 4 November. Investigations by state bar associations are ordinarily conducted behind closed doors and thus largely opaque to the public.

A federal grand jury has also been separately investigating Powell, Defending the Republic, as well as a political action committee that goes by the same name, for fundraising fraud, according to records reviewed by the Guardian.

Among those who have alleged that Powell falsely named them as co-counsel is attorney Lin Wood, who brought and litigated with Powell many of her lawsuits attempting to overturn the results of the election with her, including in the hotly contested state of Michigan.

The Michigan case was a futile attempt by Powell to erase Joe Biden’s victory in that state and name Trump as the winner. On 25 August, federal district court Judge Linda Parker, of Michigan, sanctioned Powell and nine other attorneys who worked with her for having engaged in “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” in bringing the case in the first place. Powell’s claims of election fraud, Parker asserted, had no basis in law and were solely based on “speculation, conjecture, and unwarranted suspicion”.

Parker further concluded that the conduct of Powell, Wood, and the eight other attorneys whom they worked with, warranted a “referral for investigation and possible suspension or disbarment to the appropriate disciplinary authority for each state … in which each attorney is admitted”.

Wood told the court in the Michigan case that Powell had wrongly named him as one of her co-counsel in the Michigan case. During a hearing in the case to determine whether to sanction Wood, his defense largely rested on his claim that he had not been involved in the case at all. Powell, Wood told the court, had put his name on the lawsuit without even telling him.

Wood said: “I do not specifically recall being asked about the Michigan complaint … In this case obviously my name was included. My experience or my skills apparently were never needed, so I didn’t have any involvement with it.”

Wood’s attorney, Paul Stablein, was also categorical in asserting that his client had nothing to do with the case, telling the Guardian in an interview: “He didn’t draft the complaint. He didn’t sign it. He did not authorize anyone to put his name on it.”

Powell has denied she would have named Wood as a co-counsel without Wood’s permission.

But other people have since come forward to say that Powell has said that they were named as plaintiffs or lawyers in her election-related cases without their permission.

In a Wisconsin voting case, a former Republican candidate for Congress, Derrick Van Orden, said he only learned after the fact that he had been named as a plaintiff in one of Powell’s cases.

“I learned through social media today that my name was included in a lawsuit without my permission,” Van Orden said in a statement he posted on Twitter, “To be clear, I am not involved in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the election in Wisconsin.”

Jason Shepherd, the Republican chairman of Georgia’s Cobb county, was similarly listed as a plaintiff in a Georgia election case without his approval.

In a 26 November 2020 statement, Shepherd said he had been talking to an associate of Powell’s before the case’s filing about the “Cobb GOP being a plaintiff” but said he first “needed more information to at least make sure the executive officers were in agreeing to us being a party in the suit”. The Cobb county Republican party later agreed to remain plaintiffs in the case instead of withdrawing.

Leslie Levin, a professor at the University of Connecticut Law School, said in an interview: “Misrepresentations to the court are very serious because lawyers are officers of the court. Bringing a lawsuit in someone’s name when they haven’t consented to being a party is a very serious misrepresentation and one for which a lawyer should expect to face serious discipline.”

Nora Freeman Engstrom, a law professor at Stanford University, says that Powell’s actions appear to violate Rule 3.3 of the ABA’s model rules of professional misconduct, which hold that “a lawyer shall not knowingly … make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal”.

Since election day last year, federal and state courts have dismissed more than 60 lawsuits alleging electoral fraud and irregularities by Powell and other Trump allies.

Shortly after the election, Trump named Powell as a senior member of an “elite strike force” who would prove that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race only because the election was stolen from him. But Trump refused to pay her for her services. To remedy this, Powell set up a new non-profit called Defending the Republic; its stated purpose is to “protect the integrity of elections in the United States”.

As a not-for-profit organization, the group is allowed to raise unlimited amounts of “dark money”, and donors are legally protected from the ordinary requirements to disclose their identities to the public. Powell warned supporters that for her to succeed, “millions of dollars must be raised”.

Echoing Trump’s rhetoric, Powell told prospective donors that Defending the Republic had a vast team of experienced litigators.

Among the attorneys who Powell said made up this “taskforce” were Emily Newman, who had served Trump as the White House liaison to the Department of Health and Human Services and as a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security. Newman had been a founding board member of Defending the Republic.

But facing sanctions in the Michigan case, some of the attorneys attempted to distance themselves from having played much of a meaningful role in her litigation.

Newman’s attorney told Parker, the judge, that Newman had “not played a role in the drafting of the complaint … My client was a contract lawyer working from home who spent maybe five hours on this matter. She really wasn’t involved … Her role was de minimis.”

To have standing to file her Michigan case, Powell was initially unable to find a local attorney to be co-counsel on her case but eventually attorney Gregory Rohl agreed to help out.

But when Rohl was sanctioned by Parker and referred to the Michigan attorney disciplinary board for further investigation, his defense was that he, too, was barely involved in the case. He claimed that he only received a copy of “the already prepared” 830-page initial complaint at the last minute, reviewed it for “well over an hour”, while then “making no additions, decisions or corrections” to the original.

As with Newman, Parker found that Rohl violated ethics rules by making little, if any, effort to verify the facts of the claims in Powell’s filings.

In sanctioning Rohl, the judge wrote that “the court finds it exceedingly difficult to believe that Rohl read an 830-page complaint in just ‘well over an hour’ on the day he filed it. So, Rohl’s argument in and of itself reveals sanctionable conduct.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/02/revealed-sidney-powell-trump-us-election