I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Sidney Powell for several years. Let me say unequivocally that I would stake my life on her integrity and abilities as a lawyer.
Sidney is one of the most serious, upright individuals you will ever encounter. Her towering physical stature befits a righteous Texan with a towering legal mind.
I first met Sidney when she graciously agreed to be interviewed for a podcast interview I conducted of her while she was in Washington about her first book, Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. The book is extraordinary for its stark disclosures about breathtaking corruption within the Justice Department, of which Sidney was a 10-year veteran as a prosecutor. We subsequently dined and attended social functions together, and stayed in touch on professional matters. Despite her tough-as-nails public persona, she is a genuinely warm and caring individual.
The allegations Sidney made in her book about a host of corrupt individuals was remarkable in that it named names, no holds barred. As Robert Zmirak points out in his laudatory column about Powell, what’s equally remarkable about Sidney’s book is that none of those she accuses of corruption sued her for defamation. That’s a huge “tell.” Those individuals include one whom Sidney calls the “poster child of prosecutorial misconduct,” Andrew Weissmann, who would essentially lead Robert Mueller’s special counsel team in its two-year quest to find evidence of Donald Trump “colluding” with Russia, or committing any other crime. We all know how that turned out. Tens of millions of dollars spent, an administration hounded, and no evidence of “collusion” unearthed.
Licensed to Lie should be required reading for any aspiring lawyer as an abject lesson in the enormous power wielded by the government, which can be, and sometimes is, weaponized against hapless citizens and corporations. I cited the book at length in a column in these pages in 2019, titled “The Sad Sack and the Cardinal,” discussing the venality of Robert Mueller and James Comey in their persecution of Donald Trump over the Hillary Clinton-invented Russia-Trump collusion delusion.
Powell takes us through a litany of incredible abuses of power by the “Justice” Department, including the creation of a “crime,” that lacked criminal intent, used by Weissmann against the esteemed accounting firm Arthur Andersen, which had been Enron’s accountant.
After initially being convicted of this manufactured crime, Arthur Andersen would appeal, and its conviction would be overturned in a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court. A unanimous decision. How often does that happen?
But no matter, Weissmann and the Justice Department achieved their objective. The mere initial conviction caused most of Andersen’s clients to flee and the company collapsed, leaving 85,000 employees and their families destitute, while Andersen’s appeals wended their way through the judicial system.
Sidney also detailed the Justice Department’s utter abuse of the late senator, Ted Stevens, who was unjustly indicted, prosecuted and convicted of making false statements in an alleged public corruption case, only to have his conviction overturned after a brave FBI agent whistleblower came forward, exposing that the government had withheld exculpatory evidence. But just as in the case of Arthur Andersen, the damage was done, and Stevens lost his reelection bid.
Powell’s estimable work in defending Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in the outrageous Barack Obama-directed persecution of this American patriot and combat veteran is the stuff of Hollywood legal thrillers. Gen. Flynn’s prosecution will go down in the annals of egregious government misconduct as among the worst abuses of an American citizen – annals which seem to be growing at an exponential rate. Despite logging legal victory after legal victory in her defense of Flynn, Powell has had to confront a maddeningly intractable judge in Emmet Sullivan, who has not dismissed the case despite the Justice Department itself requesting its dismissal. It is the court case from hell, but Sidney Powell has hung in for her client like a pit bull defending hearth and home.
Now Powell has taken on the greatest legal challenge of her career and, if she’s correct, the greatest crime in American history: the complete subversion of the American electoral process. The press conference she recently conducted with Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and others on President Trump’s legal team laid out a shocking level of fraud that they allege occurred in the presidential election this month. In subsequent interviews, like this one on Larry O’Connor’s radio show, Powell expanded on the implications of the design features in the vote tabulation hardware and software being used to count, and rig, elections around the world, including here in the United States. They are enormous and mind-boggling. Every American should learn of them and be equal measures frightened and angry.
As Powell told O’Connor, she is risking her hard-won reputation and potentially much more if the allegations she is making are not well-founded, because companies she is accusing of knowingly engaging in this massive fraud, like Dominion Voting Systems, could sue her for defamation. She notes that she would welcome such litigation, because it would open these companies up to the discovery process and expose much more of what she alleges are their corrupt operations.
Powell has come under much criticism for not providing evidence to support her claims – or at least evidence satisfactory to the mainstream media. But as Giuliani and Ellis explained in the press conference, they were merely providing a broad overview of the fraud that occurred and the proper venue for laying out the evidence is a court of law, which Powell assures us will take place soon, as they assemble their case.
For those who demand that President Trump cede the election to Joe Biden, recall that it took Al Gore 36 days to concede his loss to George W. Bush following the 2000 general election. And that election was contested over one narrow issue – “hanging chads” – in one state: Florida. The Trump legal team, on the other hand, has raised many serious electoral fraud issues – from bogus ballot-creation/stuffing, to Republican observers being barred from watching ballot-counting, to ballot tabulation software manipulation/rigging – in half a dozen swing states. Their task is daunting, to say the least.
Sidney Powell could not have been a better addition to the Trump legal team. She is deeply patriotic, and truly shocked by the level of fraud that she saw in this election, which was self-evident from her at-times uncharacteristically emotional delivery at the press conference. She is fighting for our Republic right now because – make no mistake – honest American elections, and the continuing viability of our democracy, is on the line right now.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for more than 33 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times and The Federalist. Follow him on Parler and Twitter at @BillMarshallDC1. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)
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