The Kraken Has Finally Arrived
Sidney Powell (Trump's "former" lawyer) has released what she had been referring to as the Kraken, and has filed a lawsuit in Georgia.
I have to give credit to Powell as she has stuck to her guns on this issue even if her previous client has """conceded""". Because of that, I'm starting to think that she is earnest in the beliefs she has expressed regarding wide-ranging conspiracy theories regarding a fraudulent election. I encourage you to see the 104-page complaint yourself because even if you're not a lawyer it's just genuinely breathtakingly bad. Just from the cover page, she misspells "District" twice and has weird errant commas. The rest of the lawsuit is bonkers for many many reasons besides just typographical errors. A few commentators have taken a deep dive into but I'll just highlight a few things:
Powell includes a redacted affidavit from an anonymous affiant (this is an oxymoron but w/e) as an exhibit. This is the same affidavit previously released from someone purportedly part of Hugo Chavez's security team who claims that Dominion was formed to flip the Venezuelan election. Redacted affidavits make no sense, you either show the evidence or not. Anonymous affidavits also make no sense, because you can't anonymously swear under penalty of perjury. There are ways to deal with sensitive information which involve moving for a protective order but at the very least the judge and the opposing party (through their attorneys) gets to see everything.
One of the exhibits appears to be a research paper about voting machines, but it was somehow formatted into a landscape view format which means half the page is cut off at the bottom. Besides rendering the entire article incomprehensible, it also means you can't see the footnotes (if any) or even where or if this paper was ever published anywhere.
One of the experts cited is described as a former electronic intelligence analyst under 305th Military Intelligence (which appears to be a training battalion) is cited as an authority on voting machines because of their "experience gathering SAM missile system electronic intelligence." The allegation here is that agents acting on behalf of China and Iran were actively monitoring and manipulating the 2020 election in the US.
The relief sought is to throw out all mail-in ballots in Georgia.
Typographical errors is one thing. I can understand working on a time crunch and hurriedly copying and pasting passages from different sources. By far my favorite was when this prosecutor c/p three paragraphs about a guy getting a handjob in a massage parlor on a case that had nothing to do with either handjobs or massage parlors. Under the guise of "my ethical obligation to correct the record", I admit I took great delight in submitting an amended brief (i.e. "Hey Judge! Just wanted to make sure you know how seriously the prosecutor is taking this case"). Ideally it should have no basis on the substantive merits, but as a heuristic, it doesn't inspire a ton of confidence for treating the endeavor seriously. The complaint itself is 104 pages, followed by dozens more pages of exhibits. I fully admit to not having read most of it. I skimmed it and highlighted aspects that stood out to me, but as far as addressing the actual meat of the case, it's just not something I'm going to do nor should it be expected of me. That's the job of either journalists/commentators working this beat, or the highly paid attorneys hired by the other side. I'm not getting compensated for this, nor am I in the best position to investigate the serious allegations raised by Powell. That's why I just linked to the complaint directly and offered a couple of commentators I found interesting/useful.
But still, I don't understand how Powell arrived at this junction. She has the resources, and presumably she also has the grace to understand under what a severe international spotlight she's operating under. The lawsuit is a tremendous achievement in bizarre spelling errors mixed in with wild claims about China and Iran monitoring the US elections, all "supported" by a bevy of exhibits cobbled together without much context. I've seen far more coherent pleadings from pro se defendants working with jailhouse supplies. For Powell to be a false flag agent playing an extremely long con (she has a long career, including being General Flynn's attorney) to embarrass Trump is starting to make more sense than many alternate theories.
The mistakes on display here are so "creative" that it's really difficult to to imagine them done on purpose. Misspelling "District" twice in your case caption, deleting all the spaces in an entire sentence, changing the alignment from left, to justified, back to left within a single paragraph, and deliberately modifying the orientation of an exhibit to chop off half of each page, etc etc are all things I never would have dreamed of coming up with on my own.
My own position: I think that Powell might actually be earnest, but might either be suffering from mild psychosis, or is getting pranked by people taking advantage of her gullibility. She is making ridiculous claims involving China, Hugo Chavez, Iran, broken algorithms, etc. That, on its own, is not a reason to dismiss the claims but crazy claims should be paired up by crazy good evidence. The effort on display is nowhere near the mark, so my default state reverts back beyond "I have no reason to believe her claims" and into "She might be suffering from a mental illness".
Part of my assessment is borne out of my own experience as an attorney with a solo practice and no staff. I've definitely been in situations where I had no idea what the fuck I was doing in court, but I'm also a relatively young lawyer who is still learning the ropes in some areas. I'm just flabbergasted at the mess on display here. I can't imagine how any lawyer would showcase a sloppy product like this, and that leads me to think that something else is wrong with her mentally, and that also does not inspire a ton of confidence in taking any of her claims at face value.
I also think the relief she's asking for is insane, because she makes no efforts whatsoever to narrowly tailor her ask. She doesn't say "Let's figure out which ballots were fraudulent/suspect/hacked/whatever and throw those out", instead she says she wants all mail-in ballots thrown out without any attempt to figure out which ones are valid. I believe she's just working backwards from "What relief would flip Georgia in favor of Trump?" instead of actually following where the evidence takes her.
I've seen something similar play out most prominently with pro se defendants in criminal trials. I know what outcome they want (dismissal obviously), but they're so blinded by the goal that their approach looks like flailing.
I had a client who fired me because he got too frustrated with me constantly telling him "that's not how that works" in response to his wild antics. For example, he wanted a witness who watched him stab a dude prohibited from testifying at trial because they were a "adverse witness" meaning they said things he didn't like. During an interview with my investigator, the witness also happened to say the client was smoking that day (a detail completely irrelevant to the charges), and as a "impeachment" the client wanted to subpoena a jailhouse nurse who the client had told he was not a smoker. In his mind, the fact that he told a nurse that he's not a smoker was conclusive proof that the witness lied about the smoking which means it's conclusive proof they lied about everything else!
Again, I will always maintain an open mind and consider compelling evidence, but virtually all of November has been a steady caravan of dramatic claims that deflate by the power of no evidence. You have to wonder when it careens past the line and into QAnon territory of unfalsifiable nuttery.