This is why you don’t swallow conspiracy theories whole-cloth without waiting for evidence to be presented. Amazingly, it appears that Trump’s own campaign is now disowning Sidney Powell’s fairly out there claims about German servers and millions of switched votes. And I don’t say that as someone who wouldn’t want to believe it if there was proof, but there was obviously no proof and plenty to the contrary.
There was no server raid in Germany. This isn't Zero Dark Thirty. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of US-German relations would realize that this notion is batshit crazy. Anyone who claims to have sources on this is lying. Anyone who says it happened is full of baloney.
— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) November 22, 2020
Here’s the Trump campaign today essentially telling Powell to go jump in a lake, which is probably the most surprising development of the last several months.
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) November 22, 2020
Well, this is awkward. How do you go from hosting a joint presser last week and having the President himself spread some of Powell’s claims to kicking her to the curb just days later? Something big must of happened behind the scenes to warrant such a statement. Remember, per Tucker Carlson (which he took a lot of heat over), Trump’s own lawyers had not seen anything conclusive from Powell and felt largely in the dark over her assertions. Perhaps this is an outgrowth of that, with Powell no longer being able to string this out any longer without giving up the goods?
I recall a conversation I had in private channels a few days ago in which my personal position was that I’m all for legal challenges. I’m also all for following them through to the end. This election is not over until the electors vote. But I also said that my patience for being gaslit is extremely low, and it’s felt like for a while that Powell was blowing smoke to sell books and up her profile. You can’t keep claiming the biggest election conspiracy in United States history and not actually back up your claims, nor did the speed with which she was moving or her filings show someone who was “saving it for court.”
Further, it was also becoming clear that Powell’s claims were hurting other more legitimate claims by so muddying the waters. Judges were not going to react kindly when it seemed like the Trump campaign was just flailing about wildly. What the President needed was a smart, measured strategy to challenge specific, provable instances of fraud. Instead, they got Powell and Rudy Giuliani going full Leroy Jenkins. In the end, that’s on Donald Trump as well, and no one should be letting him off the hook for such a stupid decision.
Unfortunately, it may be too little too late now. What I do know is that any lawyer, including Powell, that strung people along for personal gain here needs to be cast into the political outer rim.
Addendum:
This is almost certainly why this happened. It appears Powell was making claims publicly while keeping Trump and his team in the dark. They apparently had seen enough to say she didn’t have the goods and didn’t want to have her undermining their other cases any longer.
From @JerryDunleavy: White House, campaign say Sidney Powell has never shown them evidence to support the voting-machines-changed-millions-of-votes theory. https://t.co/I2GjI1URx2 pic.twitter.com/mtvwhMwMvB
— Byron York (@ByronYork) November 22, 2020
(Please follow me on Twitter! @bonchieredstate)
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