A new report from CNN says that the team of Special Counsel Jack Smith has been asking witnesses questions that relate to Sidney Powell, the ally to former President Donald Trump now indicted alongside Trump in Georgia.
Smith is the special prosecutor at the federal Justice Department handling the investigations into both the classified documents harbored with Trump after he left office and the efforts around Trump after the 2020 presidential election to secure another term for the Republican despite his election loss. Specifically, CNN says that the federal team has been looking into the roles held by Powell and a nonprofit organization she founded, Defending the Republic, in providing funding for efforts in multiple states to assemble data from local elections systems.
One such effort, in which involved parties undertook mass copying of data from Coffee County, Georgia, is part of the criminal case in that state naming Powell, but elsewhere — occasionally in known tandem with court proceedings, but repeatedly without comprehensive authorization — efforts continued.
There was, for instance, an incident similar in nature to the Coffee County debacle in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, which remains under investigation. And in Michigan, a case in which election machines were covertly taken for the intended purpose of accessing what should have been protected data has led to charges. Those charged in the Michigan case include the Trump-endorsed candidate in last year’s race for the state’s position of attorney general, Republican attorney Matthew DePerno. He lost by nine percent.
“According to sources, witnesses interviewed by Smith’s prosecutors in recent weeks were asked about Powell’s role in the hunt for evidence of voter fraud after the 2020 election, including how her nonprofit group, Defending the Republic, provided money to fund those efforts,” per the CNN reporting. The outlet also said that investigators have asked about some of the conspiracy theories that Powell promoted after the 2020 election. Presumably, Smith’s team could be in the process of establishing a factual record showing the lack of evidence for the election claims that were nonetheless used to rake in donations that went in significant part towards allegedly or potentially criminal acts. (Defending the Republic was involved in Coffee County.) Though Smith has already charged Trump in the probe related to the election efforts, the federal team could file more charges.
