Link to Sidney Powell's election lawsuit is banned by Twitter before site makes a U-turn saying it was 'mistakenly flagged' - as typo-laden legal document is ridiculed by experts
The link to Sidney Powell's election lawsuit was banned by Twitter before the site reversed its decision, saying it was 'mistakenly flagged,' as its typo-laden contents are ridiculed by legal experts.
Link to Sidney Powell's election lawsuit is banned by Twitter before site makes a U-turn saying it was 'mistakenly flagged' - as typo-laden legal document is ridiculed by experts
Powell, who was kicked out of Donald Trump's legal team after spouting wild conspiracy theories at an RNC press conference, released what she termed 'the Kraken' - two law suits alleging 'massive voter fraud' in the presidential election.
The Texas-based attorney published the 104-page document detailing allegations about Georgia and a 75-page document looking at Michigan on Wednesday night, calling for the election results to be decertified, Trump to be declared the winner and voting machines to be impounded.
In the documents - released Thanksgiving morning - she alleged the election had been 'rigged' to favor Joe Biden, and that foreign powers were involved.
She tweeted: 'The #Kraken was just released on #Georgia', along with the link to her website. She added: 'Exhibits to follow. Also #ReleaseTheKraken in #Michigan.'
That link was then flagged by Twitter before the ban on the link was later reversed.
A spokesperson for Twitter told Fox Business that 'the URL referenced was mistakenly marked under our unsafe links policy — this action has now been reversed'.
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The link to Sidney Powell's election lawsuit was banned by Twitter but then reversed as its typo-laden contents are ridiculed by legal experts
She tweeted: 'The #Kraken was just released on #Georgia', along with the link to her website. She added: 'Exhibits to follow. Also #ReleaseTheKraken in #Michigan'
In the 104-page document detailing allegations about Georgia, the court was named as 'United States Districct Court, Northern Distrcoict of Georgia'
Powell also released a 75-page document looking at Michigan, but named the court as the 'Eastern Distrct of Michigan'
According to Twitter, such actions are taken against links if they are deemed to be malicious, spam that misleads people or violates Twitter’s rules.
Powell has pushed some of most extreme conspiracy theories around Biden's win. But, despite allegations from her and other Trump defenders, no evidence has emerged of widespread voter fraud. The Trump legal team - which has distanced itself from Powell and her two suits - has filed over 30 suits of its own in battleground states trying to overturn the election. The majority of them have been thrown out of court.
In her filings, the maverick lawyer spelled out claims she had previously made at a tumultuous press conference the week before - namely that Georgia and Michigan used election machinery designed by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, with the express wish of rigging the vote.
She alleged that China and Iran used these voting systems to influence the US election, and that 96,000 votes cast for Biden in Georgia were illegally counted.
The lawyer also claims that officials in one Georgia county forced everyone to evacuate because of a water leak, only for counters to stay unsupervised to tamper with the votes.
But Powell's filings were riddled with typos, with both misspelling the name of the courts they were being filed in.
In the Georgia filing, the court was named as 'United States Districct Court, Northern Distrcoict of Georgia', while the Michigan court was named as the 'Eastern Distrct of Michigan'.
Shortly after the filing, several legal experts and political reporters took to social media to ridicule the lawyer.
'You don’t have to read 104 page “kraken” submissions by Powell, here is a good summary Conspiracy theories & spelling mistakes litter them,' British solicitor Nazir Afzal tweeted.
Former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Renato Mariotti wrote: 'Sidney Powell's "kraken" complaint is more like a baby shrimp. It isn't worth the paper it's printed on. But she has misled millions of people into believing that it will change the outcome of the election. Spoiler alert: It won't.'
Shortly after the filing, several legal experts took to social media to ridicule the lawyer
Powell claimed in the introduction that the ballots were switched in favor of Biden, and said that Iran and China were also in on the plot.
'The scheme and artifice to defraud was for the purpose of illegally and fraudulently manipulating the vote count to make certain the election of Joe Biden as the president of the United States,' the court documents claim.
She said Georgia, a GOP run state, had been the site of 'ballot stuffing' and brought the case against the governor of the state, Brian Kemp; the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger; and four election officials.
Both Kemp and Raffensperger are Republicans. Powell went on the conservative news network Newsmax last weekend to claim the two men took payoffs as part of a scheme to hand Biden the state. She showed no proof of her claim.
The day after that TV appearance the Trump legal team severed its ties with her.
Powell's case in Georgia was brought on behalf of seven plaintiffs: five of whom would have been electors if Trump won the state and the other two are Republican Party officials.
In the Georgia case, Powell outlines her theory that 'ballot-stuffing' was achieved by 'computer software created and run by domestic and foreign actors', as she made a number of different allegations of tampering and fraud.
She claimed that voting software companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic altered tallies through their software and hardware.
She said: 'Smartmatic and Dominion were founded by foreign oligarchs and dictators to ensure computerized ballot-stuffing and vote manipulation to whatever level was needed to make certain Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez never lost another election.'
She continued: 'A core requirement of the Smartmatic software design was the software's ability to hide its manipulation of votes from any audit.'
The only evidence for her claims is an apparent whistleblower from a Venezuelan military official.
While it is true that Smartmatic's founders are from Venezuela, the company said it had very little involvement in the 2020 US election, working only in one county.
Los Angeles used its touchscreen screens, where Biden took 71 per cent of the vote to Trump's 27 per cent, similar to the 2016 result where Clinton received 72 per cent and Trump 23 per cent.
Smartmatic themselves even accused the Venezuelan government of election fraud in 2017 after their systems were allegedly tampered with.
Venezuela claimed the US government was ordering Smartmatic to influence their election, but now Powell is claiming the opposite.
Powell claimed that Dominion is a 'descendant' of Smartmatic and has inherited its vote-rigging technologies, even though the two companies are competitors.
Her theory is based on the fact that Smartmatic sold the company Sequoia Voting Systems in 2007 and three years later, Dominion bought its assets.
Sequoia filed for bankruptcy in 2014 and while Dominion could have used its software, it is now 10 years since it purchased the company and the software is likely to be outdated.
She believes the machines in this election were connected to the internet, allowing for ballot-stuffing, and security of the software was breached.
Powell, an attorney for Michael Flynn , is a known QAnon conspiracy theorist. It was her representation of Flynn, who pleaded guilty in a plea deal with the Mueller inquiry to lying to the FBI, which propelled her on to the MAGA stage
The Trump campaign issued a statement saying that Sidney Powell is not associated with them on November 22, 2020
Powell wrote: 'The Dominion system used in Georgia erodes and undermines the reconciliation of the number of voters and the number of ballots cast, such that these figures are permitted to be unreconciled, opening the door to ballot stuffing and fraud.'
But again she finds little evidence that the electoral fraud actually occurred, despite alleging that as many as 96,000 votes were illegally counted in Georgia, which she says would have overturned Biden's lead of 12,670 votes.
In the Michigan case, Powell sued Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and the Michigan board of state canvassers on behalf of six plaintiffs.
Whitmer and Benson are Democrats. Whitmer certified her state's results on Monday, officially giving Biden Michigan's 16 electoral votes.
Powell said the case was one of 'massive election fraud'.
In Michigan, as in Georgia, the case focused on election machines made by a Toronto-based company called Dominion, and a rival Florida-registered firm, Smartmatic.
Powell alleged that the two companies created machines, with the help of Chavez, to rig the vote.
DailyMail.com previously revealed that Powell began her legal career by attending law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, served as a US attorney in Texas, and represented executives at fallen energy giant Enron.
It was her representation of Flynn, who pleaded guilty in a plea deal with the Mueller inquiry to lying to the FBI, which propelled her on to the MAGA stage. Flynn was pardoned by Trump on Wednesday.
It also appears to be the origin of her use of the nickname or slogan The Kraken. She has alternately been The Kraken, or been said to have unleashed The Kraken in the Flynn case - although her attempts to maneuver him out of the guilty plea are currently in limbo.