Sidney Powell appears in an August 2021 interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell has asked a federal judge to put voting machine company Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit on the back burner while she faces a racketeering (RICO) criminal trial in Georgia for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Powell, noting that her criminal case is headed for trial “on or about October 23, but no later than November 3, 2023,” asserted that in the absence of a 90-day stay of the civil defamation lawsuit she will be faced with the “‘significant dilemma’ of having to defend both lawsuits simultaneously and whether to assert or waive rights under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution here.”
A footnote in a related filing explains why “lawsuits” (plural) — that is, not just the Smartmatic case — are mentioned in the request.
“Ms. Powell and Dominion are in the process of meeting and conferring in connection with a potential stay of the Dominion litigation against Ms. Powell,” the footnote said.
The little-noticed filing and attached memorandum in support of a stay from Powell’s attorney Joshua A. Mooney last Friday asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Donald Trump appointee, to pause the Smartmatic proceedings until Nov. 29. Judge Nichols is also presiding over Dominion’s lawsuit against Powell.
Sidney Powell (L) on Nov. 20, 2022 at the “elite strike force” presser, (R) in a Fulton County Jail mugshot.
Powell’s team argued that multiple factors support a stay of proceedings, including the promotion of “better judicial efficiency.” The defense asserted that a 90-day stay would be “relatively insignificant” and that any “hardship would be minimal for Smartmatic.”
“The allegations against Ms. Powell in both actions are based upon many of the same alleged underlying events, legal theories, and other allegations. The Smartmatic lawsuit, especially given how Smartmatic has chosen to prosecute it, cannot be litigated without implicating the Fulton Action,” the memo said. “Given this close relationship, this factor weighs in favor of a stay.”
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Powell’s memo also noted that Smartmatic has “outstanding discovery requests (for which it is filing its motion to compel)” and has expressed its intent to compel Powell’s deposition on her “activities and meetings/communications with Giuliani, Trump, the Trump campaign, and others indicted or implicated in the Fulton Action.”
Smartmatic on Friday filed a motion to compel discovery and to compel Powell to sit for a deposition “within one month of producing the aforementioned discovery.”
The stay request comes not long after Powell sought a speedy trial in Georgia and motioned to sever her RICO case from her 18 co-defendants, arguing that she has “no substantive connection” with them.
Though Powell is accused of conspiring to commit election fraud, conspiring to commit computer theft, conspiring to commit computer trespass, and conspiring to defraud the state of Georgia as part of a racketeering enterprise to keep Trump in power, she maintains Fulton County DA Fani Willis (D) is trying to punish her for exercising her First Amendment rights:
In an Indictment spanning 97 pages, Ms. Powell is falsely accused of participating in a RICO conspiracy because she attended a press conference exercising her First Amendment right to speak on a matter of great public interest and national importance; met with the President at the White House where she provided a legal opinion on Executive Order 13848; her typed name appears on a contract with a vendor for forensic work for Michigan and Arizona; and, after-the-fact, a non-profit she founded gratuitously paid SullivanStrickler’s invoice. That is all she is accused of, and her name is mentioned just 14 times throughout the Indictment. The passing allegations of her “false statements” to the January 6 investigation by Congress—for which the State has no jurisdiction—are taken out of context, the allegations are themselves insufficient as a matter of law, and her statements were true.
In her motion to sever, Powell argued that “she did not agree with any of her purported coconspirators to do anything improper” and asserted she could “receive a fair trial only if she is tried alone.”
Powell argued that the speedy trial she demanded could take place over the course of just three days.
“Assuming the prosecution does not realize its error in indicting her and agree to dismiss this wrongful prosecution before trial immediately, Ms. Powell can be tried alone in three days at most and should receive a judgment of acquittal when the State rests,” the motion said.
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