On Tuesday, the final full day of outgoing President Donald Trump’s tenure, the Trump-allied lawyer Sidney Powell dropped her lawsuit challenging the presidential election outcome in Georgia, where President-elect Joe Biden won. Powell and other Trump allies alleged that a nationwide election-rigging scheme unfolded that handed the election to Biden, and Powell reiterated these claims in her so-called “Kraken” lawsuits, including the newly abandoned Georgia case. In reality, no court anywhere in the country has ever, at any point, accepted the idea that there was systematic fraud in the recent presidential election.
JUST IN: Less than 24 hours before Biden is sworn in, Sidney POWELL voluntarily drops her lawsuit to overturn results in Georgia. pic.twitter.com/SHm1fRzON7
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 19, 2021
Powell abandoned the Georgia “Kraken” lawsuit via a filing with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where her side said that they agreed “that this case be dismissed, each party to bear their own costs.” In the case, Powell had been challenging top Republican officials in Georgia, who some on the president’s side alleged were in on the imaginary scheme to rig the presidential election. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to provide expedited consideration for the lawsuit after Powell attempted to skip the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals altogether and get a hearing with the nation’s highest court after a Georgia federal judge dismissed the case.
The Atlanta-area NBC affiliate WXIA-TV, otherwise known as 11Alive, noted that Powell’s legal efforts were “routinely tossed for failing to clear basic legal procedural hurdles, such as suing the right people, suing in the right court and asking for relief a court could grant.” Federal Judge Timothy Batten, who originally dismissed the Georgia version of Powell’s so-called Kraken lawsuit, characterized Powell’s request for a court declaration of Donald Trump as the winner of the state as “the most extraordinary relief ever sought in a court in an election.” No legitimate evidence has ever emerged in support of the idea that there was some kind of nationwide election-rigging scheme that handed the election outcome to Biden — although this basic reality didn’t stop violent Trump rioters from recently trying to forcibly disrupt Congressional proceedings to formally certify the electoral college outcome.
On a related note, on Monday, then-Trump team member Jenna Ellis announced that she’d no longer be working with the Trump campaign. Previously, she’d helped lead their frenzied fight against the election outcome.
As the President’s term comes to an end, so does my role with the Trump Campaign. I’m so grateful to POTUS for the opportunity to advocate for his re-election & for election integrity.
We still have a lot of work to do for conservatism over the next 2 years! #TeamTrumpForever🇺🇸
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) January 18, 2021
