The Trump campaign released a statement Sunday, denying that attorney Sidney Powell is in any way associated with their legal team. "Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team," the statement from Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis read. "She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity."
It was a shocking turn of events, since earlier this month, Trump essentially listed his legal team on Twitter and included Powell's name, further proving that with Trump, there's always a tweet.
The announcement comes just days after the GOP's Twitter account quoted Powell, who was quite vocal during a recent press conference alongside Giuliani and Ellis, where she vowed to prove that Trump actually won the 2020 election with evidence that has not yet materialized.
As recently as Saturday, Powell made an appearance on Newsmax, where she was identified as an attorney for "President Trump's legal team."
So why the sudden about-face? While there is something naturally concerning about Powell's habit of propping up and retweeting QAnon conspiracy theories, it's not beneath Trump to get behind anything that would support his faulty election fraud narrative.
But it seems as though Powell may have gone a little too far in the aforementioned Newsmax appearance, which was off the rails to say the least.
"Georgia's probably going to be the first state I'm gonna blow up," Powell said, per Newsweek. "We've got tons of evidence. It's so much, it's hard to pull it all together. Hopefully, this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical." Even though she has refused to provide any evidence to support these claims, neither has Trump, so what's the big deal, right?
It appears that Powell aimed her conspiracy theories at the wrong people when she claimed that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger were paid for their role in the conspiracy, which has since been proven false, that Dominion Voting Systems deleted 2.7 million votes for Trump, and switched others for Joe Biden. "And Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it because they're in on the Dominion scam with their last-minute purchase or reward of a contract to Dominion of $100 million," she said.
Powell's remarks presumably created a divide between the Trump campaign and Kemp, a Republican, as well as Raffensperger, a Trump supporter. "I wish he would have won, and especially in Georgia," Raffensperger said of Trump in an interview with CNN's Amara Walker on Friday. "I certainly cast my vote for him, but the results are what the results are."
Meanwhile, the GOP may also be trying to distance itself from Powell and her efforts to discourage confidence in the election process in the state of Georgia, which is set to have two runoffs in January with control of the Senate hanging in the balance.
Needless to say, the reaction the statement from Trump's campaign made waves online.
