Earlier this month, President Donald Trump touted Sidney Powell as part of his campaign’s “great team” of lawyers trying to prove the election was stolen from him. By Sunday, however, she was persona non grata.


What You Need To Know

  • The Trump campaign released a statement Sunday disavowing attorney Sidney Powell

  • Powell has made a series of wild allegations about fraud that cost Trump the election but has not presented any evidence to the public

  • Some of Powell's claims have drawn rebukes from prominent Republicans, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa

  • Powell has vowed to carry on legal challenges on behalf of Trump

Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis released a statement disavowing the attorney, saying: “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.”

It’s unclear what exactly led to the split. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, appeared alongside Giuliani on Thursday at a Washington, D.C., news conference that was heavy on conspiracy theories and devoid of evidence. 

A request for comment sent to Powell's website was not immediately returned Monday. In a statement to CBS News on Sunday night, Powell vowed to carry on legal challenges on behalf of Trump.

“I understand today’s press release,” she said. “I will continue to represent #WeThePeople who had their votes for Trump and other Republicans stolen by massive fraud through Dominion and Smartmatic, and we will be filing suit soon. The chips will fall where they may, and we will defend the foundation of this great Republic.”

Dominion and Smartmatic are competing elections technology companies. Smarmatic’s products were not used in any of the battleground states that Democrat Joe Biden won, The New York Times reported. Dominion has posted a point-by-point rebuttal of the many baseless accusations of which it has been a target since the election. 

Among her wild allegations, Powell has claimed that voting software used in the U.S. was created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013. “It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden,” she said.

There’s no proof to support Powell’s accusation. The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Association of State Election Directors have described the election as "the most secure in American history,” adding there is “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

Powell also has made headlines in recent days for her interactions with Fox News host Tucker Carlson and her controversial interview with another conservative TV network, Newsmax.

Carlson said last week that he invited Powell on his show to present evidence supporting her claims. 

"When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her," Carlson said on his show Thursday. "When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people in positions of authority, they told us Powell has never given them any evidence either, nor did she provide any today at the press conference."

Powell told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo the next morning that she did not get angry with Carlson’s request, that she sent the host an affidavit to “help him understand the situation” and that she told him not to contact her again because he was “insulting, demanding and rude” to her.

In the interview with Newsmax on Saturday night, Powell appeared to accuse Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and its Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, of being part of a conspiracy involving a voting-system contract award that she contends harmed Trump’s reelection bid.

"Georgia is probably going to be the first state I'm gonna blow up," Powell said, referring to the lawsuits she planned to file.

"We've got tons of evidence; it's so much it's hard to pull it all together. Hopefully this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical."

The status of that lawsuit is unclear.

Chris Krebs, who was recently fired by Trump as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, tweeted Sunday night that “any claims of vote count manipulation" in Georgia “were nonsense from day 1” since the systems in the state had paper records that were validated during an audit last week.

 

 

Kemp certified Georgia’s vote count Friday. The Trump campaign has requested a recount. 

Some of Powell’s claims have drawn swift rebukes from prominent Republicans.

“Sidney Powell accusing Gov. Brian Kemp of a crime on television yet being unwilling to go on TV and defend and lay out the evidence that she supposedly has, this is outrageous conduct,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a close Trump ally, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. 

"Quite frankly, the conduct of the president's legal team has been a national embarrassment,” Christie added.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) called out Powell for saying at last week’s news conference that “we have no idea how many Republican or Democratic candidates in any state across the country paid to have the system rigged to work for them.”

“To insinuate that Republican and Democratic candidates paid to throw off this election, I think, is absolutely outrageous, and I do take offense to that,” Ernst told Fox News Radio. 

“To have that accusation just offhandedly thrown out there, just to confuse our voters across the United States, I think that is absolutely wrong.”

The Washington Post reported that Trump has told allies that Powell was “too much” and that he no longer viewed her as helpful.

The rift with Powell hints at further tumult for a legal team that has lost case after case in contested states as it works to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election. Law firms have withdrawn from cases, and in the latest blow, a federal judge dismissed on Saturday night the Trump campaign’s effort to block the certification of votes in Pennsylvania in a blistering ruling that described the arguments as “strained” and “unsupported by evidence.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.