Sidney Powell Strikes Again

Bringing sloppy to the outrageous.

Look, anyone who has read this site for even a brief amount of time knows that I am hardly innocent in the realm of typos. Indeed, over the years of writing here, and in my published work, I have long learned the value of editors, as well as confirming my own poverty of skill in the realm of proof-reading my own work.

Nothing, I have learned, is a more useful means of identifying errors than to have something go to print.

Still, good grief.

Via Bloomberg: Ex-Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell Files Election Suits in ‘DISTRCOICT’ Court.

Both of Powell’s latest lawsuits were riddled with typographical errors.

The Michigan lawsuit, which was on the court website, was frequently marred by formatting problems that removed the spacing between words. For example:

“TheTCFCenterwastheonlyfacilitywithinWayneCountyauthorizedtocountthe ballots.”

In the Georgia complaint, which was only available on Powell’s website, the word district in the court name was misspelled twice on the first page of the document. First there was an extra c for “DISTRICCT” and then, a few words later, “DISTRCOICT.”

That is pretty remarkable, especially since most word processing software would readily underline those words in red.

At a minimum, her claims are absurd and her behavior has been outrageous. And now I guess we can add sloppy to the list.

Side note, to go along with James Joyner’s earlier post, Powell represented Michael Flynn.

FILED UNDER: Law and the Courts, US Politics, , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. de stijl says:

    If by “unleashing the Kraken” she meant amateur hour ineffectual flailing, she was spot on.

    This is professional suicide in real time.

    7
  2. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    I feel some level of empathy for her on two levels. First, the types of errors the post noted are exactly the same type that happen to my writing because with my tremor getting worse, I have started to press keys that I had no intention of pressing. Second, it’s really sad when a person who makes several hundred dollars an hour can’t afford someone to do clerical work for them and has to type their own pleadings. 🙁

    Having empathized with her, I will now note that I somehow manage to correct most of the typos on what I type. Because I can do it, it’s even more important for a high-powered attorney petitioning the courts to void an election to do so. Credibility matters and spelling shows.

    @de stijl: Maybe not. Her biggest project of the moment appears to be the “foundation” that is making the claim she’s petitioning the courts for. Maybe she’s realized that, in her case, panhandling is more lucrative than lawyering. Who can say?

    4
  3. de stijl says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    No doubt she will always have the sinecure of a RWNJ media job as income, but a practicing attorney, she is done.

    Two weeks. Blaze of glory. Legal career kaput. All for a historically bad and inept pretender.

    What motivates a person to do that?

    10
  4. gVOR08 says:

    Paul Campos at LGM notes it doesn’t appear the GA suit has actually been filed. He further notes that on her website she is soliciting donations for the suit to be given to to her. On it’s face a commingling of client and personal funds that could get her disbarred.

    4
  5. Kathy says:

    I think Powell would have done as well as Hutz in the case of Simpson vs The Devil.

    6
  6. Moosebreath says:

    @gVOR08:

    “Paul Campos at LGM notes it doesn’t appear the GA suit has actually been filed.”

    I think she decided to crowd-source the task of proofreading it.

    1
  7. Not the IT Dept. says:

    I’m getting more and more sure that she’s suffering from some kind of mental health issue. Where are the members of her family?

    9
  8. Paine says:

    As a liberal grammar and spelling snob I feel completely owned by such shoddy work. Mission accomplished, Sidney!

    7
  9. de stijl says:

    Pro se “attorneys” do better.

    5
  10. Pylon says:
  11. de stijl says:

    There is scuttlebutt that Giuliani is a hardcore day drinker even when on the clock. Do not know if the rumors are true.

    There is a marked degradation in public speaking skills and extreme lack of any skill in offering a legal case.

    Guy used to be the SDNY super-stud prosecutor in the 80s. Now he is self-shamingly, embarrassingly inept and adrift.

    The contrast is remarkable.

    5
  12. ImProPer says:

    @de stijl:

    “Pro se “attorneys” do better.”

    Certainly not any worse. Courts are also far less patient with Pro Se and Pro Per “attorneys” filing frivolous, and vexatious lawsuits. Poor people fighting for their lives evidently should have a higher bar than the poor loosers of Federal elections, and their 20k per day sycophantic attorneys.

    2
  13. de stijl says:

    @ImProPer:

    Your nym is on point on this matter.

    2
  14. Michael Reynolds says:

    @de stijl:
    I can’t think of any public figure who has done such a great job of destroying his own reputation. Once Lear was a great king. In the end he’s a madman howling at the wind.

    7
  15. de stijl says:

    The “noun-verb-9/11” version of Rudy G was really bad.

    This 2020 version is truly shocking. The diminished communication and professional skills are visibly notable.

    I have personal life experience with interacting with dementia. This looks eerily familiar.

    2
  16. Della Street in Drag says:

    I’m sooooo embarrassed that this was filed when I was on vacation. Perry, you know you’re not allowed near the typewriter!

    2
  17. Gustopher says:

    @Michael Reynolds: I count Rudy Giuliani’s utter humiliation as one of the things I am thankful for this year. He was always a bad man, and an obsessive freak-show, but he’s been letting the mask slip lately, and destroying his unearned reputation as “America’s Mayor” after 9/11.

    What a shit head.

    15
  18. Kathy says:

    @Gustopher:

    It feels a bit like he was replaced by an alien clone suffering from replicative fade.

    6
  19. ImProPer says:

    @de stijl:

    I’ll plead the 5th on that

    2
  20. MarkedMan says:

    @de stijl:

    What motivates a person to do that?

    Sadly, I fear it is mental illness. The real travesty lies with those that encourage her.

    2
  21. MarkedMan says:

    @Michael Reynolds: Giuliani was never what those outside NYC thought he was. While mayor, he assumed credit for a strategy that reduced crime. There were several problems with that. First, the decline matched the nationwide decline that started at the same time. Second, it actually started when David Dinkens was mayor. And third, if you are going to credit the strategy, the originator was the police chief… who Giuliani fired when people pointed that out.

    Before 9/11 Giuliani was already starting to implode. He replaced the Police Commisioner with Bernie Kerick, a penny-ante corrupt lackey who later… well, just Google him. The horrendous Rikers Island scandal was starting to surface, a combination of sadism, depravity and corruption that led right back to Rudy.

    Bottom line, just like Trump, those not clued in had a very different impression of Giuliani than those who were daily exposed.

    16
  22. de stijl says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Those that encourage her are jackals.

    Those that believe her or Ellis or Giuliani will be with us for decades. A generation of R voters convinced that the system is broken and stacked against them. A cohort that believes that black majority cities’ votes are inherently fraudulent.

    1
  23. Kathy says:

    @MarkedMan:

    As I recall, Giuliani ran a consulting company advising cities on means to fight crime. He visited Mexico City sometime in the first decade of the century (the nameless decade, as far as I can tell). I don’t recall whether anything came off it.

    Lots of rich/powerful people take credit for what others do. I tease my acquaintances who are Cowboys fans every draft period, by asking whom Dallas will pick for the owner position, and whether they’ve seen scouting reports of Wharton and other leading business schools.

    1
  24. de stijl says:

    @Kathy:

    Jerry Jones is an awful human being.

    I am richer than you therefore I am smarter and better than you rich guy type shitheel. Fuck those dudes.

    Money does not make you smart. It often makes you stupid. It very often makes you hubristic.

    2
  25. de stijl says:

    @Kathy:

    When I switched banks they initially set me up with a Wharton grad. Slick as ice, polished, super professional. Had a personal theory that alpha curves were predictive or somesuch. Solid history.

    I passed on him. The vibe was way off-kilter. I don’t bond with slick.

    Gimme a scrapper. A bootstrapper.

    2
  26. Kylopod says:

    A couple years ago I read a significant amount of material on the alt-right. One of the pieces was a short book called Kill All Normies by Angela Nagle. It was fairy informative overall, but it contained no index or bibliography, and it was filled with spelling and grammar errors. It kept spelling Pat Buchanan’s surname as “Buchannan.” But sometimes it spelled it correctly. It went back and forth, with no rhyme or reason.

    Typos are like farts. Everybody does ’em, but there are clear differences in degree. For instance, I’ve seen many published works use the word “that” in place of “than.” (I guess it’s something that spell-checkers overlook, and that even tend to elude human copy-editors doing a quick scan with their eyes.) But when you have a lot of very obvious, blatant typos piling up in a single work, it gives an impression of amateurishness.

    As for Sidney Powell, I’m reminded a little of Alan Keyes. Someone with a decent resume who went down a conspiracy rabbit hole that made them increasingly isolated.

    1
  27. Jen says:

    These are obvious, glaring errors she should have caught because you should always, always proofread documents before sending them out into the world.

    That said, software programs I am familiar with do not give the “red underline” for spelling errors in sections where all-caps are used. They treat those as acronyms, not words, so it won’t flag the error.

    1
  28. CSK says:

    @Kylopod:

    …it was fairy informative overall…”

    Ahem 😀

    2
  29. Kylopod says:

    @CSK: It wasn’t me. 😉

  30. CSK says:

    @Kylopod:
    That’s what they all say. 🙂

  31. mhb inc says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker: Did it occur to you that maybe she put that document together? Maybe it was t—- or someone close to him that filed that doc.