Sidney Powell’s Voter Fraud Claims Fail In All Battleground States As Arizona And Wisconsin Judges Reject Cases
Topline
Federal judges in Arizona and Wisconsin dismissed lawsuits Wednesday brought by former Trump legal advisor Sidney Powell that attempted to overturn the election results, marking the third and fourth of Powell’s “Kracken” lawsuits to fail in court and striking down the attorney’s debunked and baseless claims of widespread voter fraud involving Dominion voting machines in every battleground state she challenged.
Attorney Sidney Powell speaks during a rally on Dec. 2, 2020, in Alpharetta, Ga.
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Key Facts
Powell’s Arizona and Wisconsin challenges were two of four battleground state lawsuits the attorney filed, which seek to block the states’ election results and allege “massive election fraud” and wrongdoing involving Dominion Voting Systems machines.
Two of Powell’s lawsuits had already failed Monday in Michigan and Georgia, with the judge in Michigan noting Powell’s claims are “nothing but speculation and conjecture,” and the case appeared to be primarily about undermining “people’s faith in the democratic process.”
U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetawa sided with those judges in Arizona, dismissing the case for a range of issues including lack of standing and bringing the case too late, and saying Powell’s allegations of fraud are “sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence, and Plaintiffs’ invocation of this Court’s limited jurisdiction is severely strained.”
The judge said the hundreds of pages of affidavits and declarations the plaintiffs submitted as evidence of fraud were “only impressive for their volume,” and said Powell’s lawsuit was “void of plausible allegations that Dominion voting machines were actually hacked or compromised.”
U.S. District Court Judge Pamela Pepper then dismissed the Wisconsin case hours later on similar grounds, writing, “Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country. One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so.”
Pepper noted that since Wisconsin has already certified its election results and sent the Certificate of Ascertainment to the federal government, “most of the relief the plaintiff seeks is beyond this court’s ability to redress absent the mythical time machine.”
Crucial Quote
“Allegations that find favor in the public sphere of gossip and innuendo cannot be a substitute for earnest pleadings and procedure in federal court,” Humetawa wrote in the Arizona case. “They most certainly cannot be the basis for upending Arizona’s 2020 General Election.”
Key Background
Powell brought her battleground state lawsuits after the Trump campaign distanced itself from the attorney when she began spreading the Dominion conspiracy theory, which has been wholly debunked. The attorney’s lawsuits are part of a broader post-election legal effort by the Trump campaign and GOP allies to challenge Biden’s victory, which has been almost entirely unsuccessful. According to a tally kept by Democratic Party attorney Marc Elias, Republican plaintiffs have so far lost or withdrawn more than 50 cases and only netted one minor win. Powell’s court failure in Arizona also came one day after the Arizona Supreme Court denied the state’s Republican Party chair’s attempt to challenge the election results, ruling unanimously Tuesday that GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward did not provide sufficient evidence of fraud or “any evidence of ‘misconduct,’ ‘illegal votes’ or that the Biden Electors ‘did not in fact receive the highest number of votes for office.’”
What To Watch For
The Trump campaign still has outstanding cases in federal and state court in Wisconsin, which will be heard Thursday, and Powell has already appealed her losses in Georgia and Michigan and is likely to do the same with Wednesday’s rulings. The attorney has suggested she hopes to take her cases to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ward has also suggested she could take her challenge of Arizona’s election results to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying in a video message Wednesday that she was “preparing about what to do next.”
Further Reading
Sidney Powell’s Georgia Lawsuit Gets Thrown Out In Court (Forbes)
‘The People Have Spoken’: Sidney Powell’s Michigan Lawsuit Gets Shut Down In Court (Forbes)
How Sidney Powell’s ‘Kraken’—Pushed By QAnon—Went From Cable News To Trump Mainstream (Forbes)
Arizona Supreme Court crushes GOP chair Kelli Ward’s coup attempt (AZ Central)
*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Forbes can be found here ***
