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Monday 21 December 2020

Conspiracy theorist attorney Sidney Powell meets Trump in White House for the SECOND time in 48 hours 'to pitch plan to use executive order to seize voting machines for inspection'

 Conspiracy theorist attorney Sidney Powell was spotted at the White House on Sunday night, just two days after President Donald Trump floated the idea of naming her special counsel to investigate election fraud.

CNN spotted her leaving the residence side of the White House shortly before 9 p.m. ET.

Powell denied that she was meeting with Trump, but when pressed as to whether she met with the president or other White House officials, she told the news network: 'It would be none of your business.'

Her presence at the White House, which comes after she was dismissed from President Trump's legal team last month, is seen as a sign the president is becoming increasingly desperate to overturn the election results and could resort to extreme measures to stay in power.

During her Sunday night visit, Powell pitched to Trump a plan for him to use an executive order to seize voting machines for inspections, according to reports, an idea Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani discussed with officials at the Department of Homeland Security last week only to be told the agency did not have the authority to make such a move. 

Conspiracy theorist attorney Sidney Powell was spotted at the White House on Sunday night

Conspiracy theorist attorney Sidney Powell was spotted at the White House on Sunday night

Sidney Powell pitched to President Trump a plan for him to use an executive order to seize voting machines for inspections, according to reports

Sidney Powell pitched to President Trump a plan for him to use an executive order to seize voting machines for inspections, according to reports

Powell also attended a Friday meeting in the Oval Office, which turned into a shouting match among Trump team members, along with her client Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser. In the contentious sit down, Powell reportedly called other officials 'quitters' for giving up on overturning the election results. 

Trump advisers have distanced themselves from her and her outlandish claim of an international conspiracy at work with the deep state to remove Trump from the White House.

'It's basically Sidney versus everybody,' a source in Friday's meeting told Axios.'That is why voices were raised. There is literally not one motherf****r in the president's entire orbit — his staunchest group of supporters and allies — who doesn't think that Sidney Powell should be on that first rocket to Mars.' 

Another senior administration official told the news outlet there were concerns among White House advisers at the amount of time the president was spending listening to Powell and Flynn, who are pushing a scorched earth strategy.

'People who are concerned and nervous aren't the weak-kneed bureaucrats that we loathe,' the official said. 'These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history.' 

During Friday's meeting Flynn pitched the idea of imposing martial law and using the military to re-run the election, an idea he floated during an appearance on the conservative news outlet Newsmax last week. 

'[Trump] could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically rerun an election in each of those states,' Flynn told Newsmax. 

Trump denied the martial law idea.

'Martial law = Fake News. Just more knowingly bad reporting!,' the president tweeted early Sunday. 

Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone voiced their objections during the Oval Office meeting, which was first reported by The New York Times.

And, randomly, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne claimed to be at that meeting.

'For the first time in my life I feel sorry for Donald Trump. He is standing up to his waist in snakes. Trust Rudy and Sidney only,' he wrote on Twitter. 

Sidney Powell
Mike Flynn

Sidney Powell (left) and Mike Flynn (right) attended the Friday meeting at the White House, where Trump is said to have mulled making Powell a special counsel 

Powell has been the lead instigator in floating a conspiracy theory that voting machines in states Trump lost flipped votes from the president to Joe Biden. There has been no proof of massive voter fraud and Trump's own administration said the election was safe and secure. 

Her efforts so far have been a comedy of errors.

Shortly after midnight on the eve of Thanksgiving she published a 104-page document detailing allegations about Georgia and a 75-page document looking at Michigan, calling for the election results to be decertified, Trump to be declared the winner and voting machines to be impounded.

In the documents she alleged the election had been 'rigged' to favor Biden and that foreign powers were involved. 

She tweeted: 'The #Kraken was just released on #Georgia', along with a link to her website.

She added: 'Exhibits to follow. Also #ReleaseTheKraken in #Michigan'.

Giuliani said this weekend that the Trump legal team is changing its strategy to focus more on voting machines. 

The president's 'elite strike force team' - as they call themselves - have not won any major court victories. Judges appointed by the president and the United States Supreme Court have denied the team's efforts to throw doubt on the election results. Recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin have confirmed Biden's victory in those states.

'We met pretty much on and off all day yesterday, and starting this morning, there's a completely different strategy,' Giuliani told Steve Bannon's War Room podcast. 'The strategy is going to focus a great deal on some evidence we have about some of these machines that could throw off these states in a matter of maybe a one- or two-day audit.'

Powell , who famously vowed she would 'release the Kraken' to help the president, accused Dominion Voting Systems of having ties to Venezuela and China. She blamed their machines for Trump's loss. She was dismissed from Trump's legal team last month as the campaign tried to distance itself from those claims. 

Dominion sent her a letter demanding she retract her claims and has threatened her with legal action.

John Poulos, the CEO of Dominion, voluntarily testified under oath before the Michigan Senate last week where he denied Powell's claims.

'Dominion is not and has never been a front for communists,' he said. 'It has no ties to Hugo Chavez, the late dictator of Venezuela. We have never been involved in Venezuelan elections. Its machines have never been used in Venezuela.'

On Saturday, the president's campaign sent a memo to campaign officials telling them to preserve documents related to Powell and Dominion in case of legal action by the company against her, CNN reported.

Trump continues to refuse to concede the election even as Powell has failed to provide evidence to back up her claims and many of the president's own advisers dismiss her as a conspiracy theorist.  

Biden won the Electoral College 302 to Trump's 232. He also beat the president in the popular vote, winning more than 81.2 million votes to Trump's 74 million. 

Meanwhile, Powell's social media accounts have been flooded with QAnon conspiracy theories and she had been on the President's radar since representing his disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn.

Now Powell, a 65-year-old mother of one who practices law in Dallas but is from Raleigh, North Carolina, appears to be trying to monetize her infamy.

The website for the Legal Defense Fund appears to have been set up on November 11, a day after she appeared on the Lou Dobbs show on Fox.

Originally it stated that '$500,000 must be raised in the next 24 hours' but it was updated to ask for 'millions' in donations to stop the certification of ballots.  


The mission of the organization is listed as: 'To protect and defend the lawful votes of American citizens, ensure election integrity, educate the world on what it means to be a constitutional Republic, and pursue legal action to preserve the vision of our Founders and to maintain this great Republic.'

The website adds: 'The future of our Republic is at stake. The left, the media, and a complicit Republican Establishment are attempting to steal this election through a staggering voter fraud operation. The time to fight is now.'

The website has a form for credit card payments and suggests that rather than writing checks to The Legal Defense Fund people should make them payable to 'Sidney Powell'.

The address that is given is a UPS store in West Palm Beach, Florida, which appears to be a PO Box.

According to IRS guidelines a 501(c)(4) normally applies to 'civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare'.

Examples include a 'community association that works to improve public service' by publishing a free community newspaper.

Neighborhood watch patrols could be another option as would an organization that arranges an 'annual festival of regional customs and traditions'.

The IRS test for a 501(c)(4) organization is that it must be 'primarily engaged' in social welfare issues but the language is loose enough to allow organizations like The Legal Defense Fund to operate.

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 U.S. 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 the eve of Thanksgiving.

It also appears to be the origin of her use of the nickname or slogan The Kraken.  

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