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Donald Trump welcomed Sidney Powell onto his legal team in 2020, despite his claims on Sunday that she was never his lawyer, a social media post shows.
Trump is trying to distance himself from Powell after she took a plea deal in the Georgia election-tampering case and agreed to testify against Trump and the other defendants.
On Sunday, Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social that "despite the Fake News reports to the contrary, and without even reaching out to ask the Trump Campaign, MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS."
However, in the following hours, several people reposted a Trump social media claim from November 14, 2020, in which he welcomed Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and two others as "a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives" to work on "the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS."
Trump posted the comments just over a week after the 2020 election, when he was bringing more lawyers into his team to contest the result. Newsweek has contacted Trump's team for comment via email.
After Trump welcomed her onto the team, Powell made a number of unsubstantiated claims at a news conference on November 20. At the press conference, also attended by Giuliani and Ellis, Powell suggested that voting software used by Georgia and other states was created at the direction of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and that votes for Trump had probably been switched in favor of Joe Biden.
Three days later, on November 23, 2020, Giuliani and Ellis released a terse statement distancing her from the Trump legal team.
"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," Giuliani and Ellis said in the statement.
However, a video has also emerged of Powell's video deposition before the committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riots, in which she recalled that Trump had appointed her as his special counsel to investigate the election result.
"He had asked me to be special counsel to address the election issues and to collect evidence. He was extremely frustrated with, I would call it, the lack of law enforcement by any of the government agencies who are supposed to act to protect the rule of law and our republic," she told the committee.
Powell reached a deal with prosecutors in Atlanta, Georgia, last Thursday, agreeing to cooperate with Georgia's investigation into tampering in the 2020 presidential election in exchange for a six-year probation sentence, a $6,000 fine and a written apology to Georgia residents.
Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro took a plea deal in Georgia on Friday when he pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to file false documents. He will also have to testify against the other defendants. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case.
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About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more