Hours after claiming that President Donald Trump won the election by a landslide and there is evidence to overturn it, campaign lawyer Sidney Powell said her team will sue more election officials in key states.
While the campaign will not sue election software manufacturing companies, “the suits will be against the election officials to invalidate the results of the election and force it to the legislatures and the Electoral College and then the Congress if necessary,” said Powell, a former federal prosecutor who successfully defended Gen. Michael Flynn in court, in an interview with Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs.
Powell was likely referring to Article One, Article Two, and the 12th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution about contested or contingent elections. Some legal experts and Congress members, including Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), have suggested that Congress can reject a state’s Electoral College votes. Some state Senates and Assemblies or Houses can vote to send up their own slate of electors for when the Electoral College meets in December.
“The entire election, frankly, in all the swing states should be overturned and the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump,” she told Dobbs. “It’s gonna have to follow the Constitutional provisions.”
Powell did not say what officials will be sued.
Earlier Thursday, Powell described an alleged transnational conspiracy using “communist money” from Cuba, Venezuela, and possibly China to overturn the election. She did not provide evidence.
“American patriots are fed up with the corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government,” she said in a news conference. “We are not going to be intimidated. We are not going to back down. We are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it. And we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom.”
Powell, in the news conference, brought up alleged connections between Smartmatic, Dominion Voting Systems, and Venezuela’s regime under long-dead strongman Hugo Chavez. She made reference to an affidavit filed this week that cited testimony from an alleged whistleblower and former Venezuelan military member, who claimed Smartmatic, Dominion, and other election software companies used technology that was developed in Venezuela under Chavez many years ago.
Over the years, Venezuela’s government has been accused of election-rigging schemes on behalf of Chavez and current leader Nicolas Maduro.
Smartmatic and Dominion have both denied they have any connection to one another, while Dominion has denied having ties to any foreign government, including Venezuela. Dominion said that it purchased assets from a subsidiary of Smartmatic three years after it was sold.
Various secretaries of state and the Department of Homeland Security have said that there is no evidence of voter fraud, while the DHS said that the Nov. 3 election was the “most secure” in U.S. history.
A 2006 diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks years ago, titled, “Caracas’ View of Smartmatic and its voting machines,” written by former U.S. Embassy counselor Robert Downes, noted that Smartmatic was formed by engineers in Venezuela and was used in the country for years.
“Smartmatic is a riddle. The company came out of nowhere to snatch a multli-million dollar contract in an electoral process that ultimately reaffirmed Chavez’ mandate and all-but destroyed his political opposition,” Downes wrote at the time. “The perspective we have here, after several discussions with Smartmatic, is that the company is de facto Venezuelan and operated by Venezuelans. The identity of Smartmatic’s true owners remains a mystery. Our best guess is that there are probably several well-known Venezuelan businessmen backing the company who prefer anonymity either because of their political affiliation or, perhaps, because they manage the interests of senior Venezuelan government officials.”
Smartmatic and Dominion have not responded to a request for comment.
