On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court formally denied requests from attorney Sidney Powell and allies for action in cases involving the 2020 presidential election in Arizona and Wisconsin, where President Joe Biden defeated ex-President Donald Trump.
Supreme Court Rejects Sidney Powell’s Election Fraud Petitions without Further Commenthttps://t.co/x2GHgFQMIj
— Law & Crime (@lawcrimenews) March 1, 2021
Powell, who was once affiliated with Trump’s personal legal team and continued her Trump-allied fight against the 2020 presidential election outcome for awhile, wanted the court to answer questions including “Whether presidential electors have standing to challenge the outcome of a presidential election for fraud and illegality that cause the defeat of their candidate.” To be clear, the “fraud and illegality” that Powell’s question took as a given wasn’t actually present, although the court didn’t go over this fact in response to her petitions. Instead, the court simply stated that her requests for action were denied.
Writ of Mandamus: order from a court to an inferior government official ordering them to properly fulfill their official duties or correct an abuse of discretion. It is an extraordinary remedy, used only in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance. 2/
— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) March 1, 2021
Of course, the entire presidential transition process is long since complete, but Trump and some of his allies have not abandoned their false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged for Biden. Just this weekend — the day before the Supreme Court’s formal rejections of these Powell requests, Trump repeatedly reiterated his false belief that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election during remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He even trotted out some of his familiar supposed evidence for the claim, including the falsehoods that there were more votes than voters in Detroit and Pennsylvania. In reality, no court anywhere in the country ever even partially accepted the idea that fraud was responsible for Biden’s victory.
Besides her one-time affiliation with Trump’s personal legal team, Powell also figured more broadly in Trump’s post-election challenges to the results. At one point, while still in office, Trump reportedly floated the idea of appointing the conspiracy-inclined Powell to a special counsel position in the federal government, where she would be in place to investigate issues related to supposed election fraud. Presidents do not have the authority to make special counsel appointments, and Trump abandoned the idea. Powell, however, didn’t abandon her conspiracies — she has also claimed that the presidential election was rigged as part of a scheme kickstarted by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — who died over seven years ago. Needless to say, there is no evidence for her claims.
