Sidney Powell is a tall, dignified-looking attorney who became something of a cult figure among Trumpsters. Shortly after the election, Powell unleashed her “Kraken” in four legal cases aimed at overturning or at least modifying the 2020 election results of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. None succeeded.
I remember watching Powell on television, where she talked confidently about foreign governments that used voting machines to shave votes from one candidate, so they could be given to the other candidate. These foreign voting irregularities happened many years ago.
Powell cited a credible witness in support of her claims: CIA subcontractor Navid Keshavarz-Nia. Regarding this man, the New York Times used to be very complimentary. It reported that his co-workers in U.S. Intelligence felt that Keshavarz-Nia “was always the smartest person in the room.” Keshavarz-Nia filed an affidavit that made many assertions supportive of Powell’s arguments.
To say the least, these claims were intriguing. However, I kept waiting for Powell to slide her story into the current decade. Were her claims applicable to the 2020 election? After all, elections had changed in several ways, such as these:
During the last 15 years, most states started using paper backups. In a post-election audit, those could be used to spot electronic cheating.
There was a proliferation of mail-in ballots, and they are inherently more susceptible to identity theft. (Just ask Jimmy Carter.)
In the 2020 election, many states dropped or severely reduced signature matching requirements. That made the illegal harvesting of ballots safe and easy.
To me, cheating with machines is possible but no longer necessary unless the fraudsters miscalculate. (For example, they do not submit enough harvested ballots to alter the election results.) If they have enough time, motivation, access to registration lists, and access to ballots, then stuffing drop boxes with harvested ballots is probably the fraud methodology of choice. And that is exactly what happened in the 2020 election. If you doubt it, see the 2000 Mules again. (One day I will write a separate piece explaining why the movie is very credible.)
For these reasons I was skeptical that Powell had witnesses who could testify regarding the recent use of machines to shave votes. Although it was theoretically possible that Powell’s conjectures were correct, she never produced the evidence. That only hurt the person she was trying to help — President Donald Trump.
Shortly after January 6th, Powell was, apparently, part of a group that sought to test one of the Georgia voting machines. This is being portrayed as the crime of the century, and it led to Powell’s recent plea deal.
Powell’s pleads guilty
By now you have heard that Sidney Powell pled guilty in the so-called Georgia election interference case. However, it seems that she has not recanted her views regarding election fraud. Her guilty plea only concerns a misguided effort to test an election machine in Coffee County. It is barely a crime at all, since there was no criminal intent. The so-called Powell conspirators made pictures of ballots after getting permission from Misty Hampton, the Coffee County Elections Administrator. No one was trying to destroy records, change votes, or damage equipment. Big deal!
Of course, the mainstream media (MSM) is not satisfied to see Powell get hit with a few little misdemeanor charges related to her efforts to examine a voting machine. After all, she is not even going to jail!
The MSM wants to portray this as a serious crime involving the fraudulent election claims of Donald J. Trump. That sells copy in left-wing media. In a re-writing of history, a slew of media outlets now describe Sidney Powell as a Trump consigliore, who is now trying to distance herself from the crimes of Donald Trump. For example, the New York Times reported on October 19, 2023:
Ahead of her Georgia Trial, Sidney Powell seeks distance from Trump. Ms. Powell, a lawyer who promoted conspiracy theories about election fraud after Donald J. Trump’s 2020 defeat, now says she never represented him or his campaign (emphasis added).
As you can see, the Times has a breaking news story: Powell “now” seeks to distance herself from Trump. However, the story is bogus. Trump is the one who distanced himself from Powell, and he did it long ago.
Here is what the same publication (NY Times) reported way back on November 22, 2020:
Trump team disavows lawyer who peddled conspiracy theories on voting. President Trump’s campaign issued a striking repudiation of Sidney Powell, who had offered up widely derided conspiracy theories as she tried to aid the president’s baseless challenges to vote counts.
Trump’s position is not refuted by Sidney Powell, who says (through her lawyer) that she “did not represent President Trump or the Trump campaign” after the election.
There is one more issue to mention. On December 18, 2020, Powell and a few of her supporters tried to pitch a controversial idea to Trump, who rejected it. The idea was to make Powell a special counsel to investigate election fraud. Powell said that Trump seemed very interested in her ideas, but after “10 or 15” minutes, the meeting ended.
Here is the bottom line. Powell pled guilty to a few minor misdemeanors to save herself the hassle and cost of fighting this case. It is a nothing burger that is unlikely to affect Trump in any way — except on loony leftwing platforms.
Excellent analysis. I only differ in a small respect. You are correct that there are two direct means by which election results are manipulated using ballots and/or the counting of ballots. There are other methods that are not as direct, but no less devastating, including the various media controlled psyops and voter intimidation schemes, but that is not for this response. I refer to the various mechanisms of ballot stuffing you describe as "frontloading," and the electronic manipulation using the machines after the votes are cast, as "backloading." Here is how you can tell the frontloading was insufficient and they had to resort to electronic backloading - - it takes more than a day to count the votes and, the longer it takes, the more extensive the backloading is. Based on this and many other data points, it is my belief that extensive backloading was employed to overcome Trump's victory in 2020 (it took weeks to get a final count). It was blatant and only the most subjective observer or someone who's cognitive dissonance and refusal to believe such massive fraud could or would be attempted AND accomplished right before our eyes, could ever happen in this country. As for Ms. Powell's guilty plea, anyone who has ever been confronted with the draconian choice of losing everything or taking a plea bargain (isn't it really a form of bribery that if the defendant tried with witnesses would result in further charges for witness tampering or obstruction?) can tell you it has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. The truly guilty are the real beneficiaries of the plea bargain as they get a real break, while the truly innocent trade the truth for a guaranteed lesser outcome in terms of potential (and likely) damage to their lives. The system stopped being fair and about justice a long time ago. It JUST-IS!
Clearly, there is no justice in Fulton County Georgia. The DA there promises a trial with 180 witnesses, thus a trial which is predicted to be 4 months long. (The obvious purpose of all this is to tie Trump up for four months.) For Ms Powell, a four month trial means financial destruction (just like what Obama's FBI did to General Flynn). Not only would she be unable to earn income for four months, she would be having to fund her attorney for four months of court duty. Total cost to defned herself against a prosecutuer with u nlimited funds supplied by the taxpayer: ONE MILLION DOLLARS (minimum). The plea deal is a Hobson choice; especially given all jurors will be residents of Fulton County which Biden won with 73% of the vote.