During a new interview with a right-wing commentator, conspiracy theorist — and lawyer — Sidney Powell offered a curious perspective on the events of January 6. In short, she indicated that, on January 6, those in her camp were hoping for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to issue an injunction to stop the counting of the electoral votes by Congress — which suggests that extremist supporters of former President Donald Trump, or at least those in positions of ideological and/or practical leadership, may have been pushing a very specific aim in fostering the insurrection.
As former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski put it, Powell’s interview “suggests that the purpose of the insurrection was to DELAY the electoral college certification to give Alito time to intervene on this legal challenge.” In her comments, Powell also drew in House GOP Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who she claimed had somehow helped block House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from becoming a party to the proceedings in which Powell’s side sought the injunction stopping the formal counting of the electoral votes.
Powell said in the interview that she and her allies were “filing a 12th Amendment Constitutional challenge to the process that the Congress was about to use under the Electoral Act provisions that simply don’t jive with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Powell added that “Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that.” Powell appears to have been referring to a case filed with Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) as a plaintiff, which sought a declaration that then-Vice President Mike Pence possessed the rightful authority to sway the Congressional counting of the electoral votes towards a particular candidate. He possessed no such authority, and eventually, Pence declined to try and upend the election certification.
Powell also said that there’d been “inside goings-on in Congress, whereby I believe it was Steve Scalise and [Kevin] McCarthy kept [Pelosi] from being an actual party” to the case. Powell added that “then everything broke loose, and [Pelosi] had to really speed up reconvening Congress to get the vote going before Justice Alito might have issued an injunction to stop it all.” Check out Powell’s comments below:
This new interview by Powell is interesting. It suggests that the purpose of the insurrection was to DELAY the electoral college certification to give Alito time to intervene on this legal challenge. But, Powell says they didn’t anticipate Pelosi reconvening Congress that day. pic.twitter.com/HnmpcOci3Q
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 26, 2021
