Rudy Giuliani, personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, said Monday that he has distanced himself from former Michael Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell because the pair are “pursuing two different theories.”
“What is the reason for the split between Powell and Giuliani, at all?” Fox Business host Lou Dobbs asked the lawyer during a segment on Monday.
“I think it’s because we’re pursuing two different theories,” Giuliani answered. “Our theory of the case to get to the Supreme Court … is, basically, misconduct of the election by state officials in at least five or six different states, in which the misconduct of the election involved deprivation of Constitutional rights for the president.”
Giuliani argued that in Democratic parts of states, there was so-called “curing” of ballots allowed, but not in other parts of the same state. He also said that there were 680,000 “unexamined” ballots in Pennsylvania and claimed that only in Michigan was there worse alleged misconduct.
Trump’s legal team distanced themselves from Powell via a statement released Sunday, The Daily Wire reported.
“Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” the statement said. “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”
The statement was signed by Giuliani and Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis.
Days earlier, Fox News host Tucker Carlson made headlines when he told his audience that Powell repeatedly declined to appear on his show to outline evidence for her explosive claims.
“So we invited Sidney Powell on this show. We would’ve given her the whole hour; we would’ve given her the entire week actually and listened quietly the whole time at rapt attention — that’s a big story,” Carlson said, The Daily Wire reported. “But she never sent us any evidence despite a lot of requests, polite requests, not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her. When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people in positions of authority, they told us Powell has never given them any evidence either, nor did she provided any today at the press conference.”
During a Thursday press conference, where Powell appeared alongside Giuliani and Ellis, the former Flynn attorney claimed that Dominion Voting Systems utilized software originally designed for Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
“What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela,” Powell said at the presser, The Daily Wire reported. “Cuba and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States. … The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out.”
Dominion called Powell’s claims “absurdities” that were “deeply concerning,” Fox News reported: “The latest flood of absurdities is deeply concerning, not just for Dominion but also for our dedicated state and local partners and the electoral process on whole. Dominion is plainly a non-partisan American company with no ties to Venezuela or Cuba. Vote counts are conducted by county and state election officials, not by Dominion, or any other election technology company — our systems support tabulation by those officials alone.”
Smartmatic has also pushed back against the allegations, publishing its own fact-check on various claims about the company, including the alleged ties between Dominion and Smartmatic:
There are no ties between Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic – plain and simple. No ownership ties, no software leasing, no business at all between them. In 2009, (that’s more than a decade ago) Smartmatic licensed scanning machines from Dominion for use in The Philippines for a Smartmatic election project. Our one contract with Dominion was short-lived and ended in a lawsuit. That was the first and last time that Smartmatic and Dominion tried to do business together.
Smartmatic has only owned one election company in the US, Sequoia Voting systems. Smartmatic sold the company in 2007 to Sequoia’s management team. More than three years later Sequoia was bought by Dominion Voting Systems. Smartmatic had no part in Sequoia’s acquisition by Dominion.
This article has been expanded to include an excerpt of Smartmatic’s statement.
Related: Pennsylvania GOP Slams Dominion Systems For Canceling On Giving Testimony