Exit Sidney Powell

When Rudy Giuliani took the lectern at his 90-minute press conference last week (video below), he was accompanied by five members of the Trump campaign’s legal team including Sidney Powell. Indeed, the press conference was billed as that of the Trump legal team. After greeting the assembled reporters, Giuliani stated: “This is representative of our legal team. We’re representing President Trump and we’re representing the Trump campaign.”

To be clear, Sidney Powell was not presented as a guest star or independent contractor. She was presented as a member of the team representing the Trump campaign or President Trump. Last night in a statement attributed to Giuliani and fellow campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, Powell was cut loose with this statement: “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”

In a statement of her own, Powell acknowledged that she “underst[ood] today’s press release” and that she would continue her work on behalf of “#WeThePeople who had their votes for Trump and other Republicans stolen by massive fraud…”

Powell’s performance on Trump’s legal team reflected poorly on it. It might have been laughable under other circumstances. One can only wonder what they thought she was going to say. It can’t have come as a shock to them that she would school us in “a conspiracy so immense.” Her performance came off as unhinged.

Among the publications with a conservative orientation reporting Powell’s departure from the Trump team are the Washington Examiner (Jerry Dunleavy) and Breitbart (Joel Pollak). If you want to understand why Powell is now off on her own, read Dunleavy and Pollak.

Rich Lowry observes:

Powell has been interviewed by a bunch of high-profile right-wing media figures over the last two weeks, all of whom credited her. Do any of them mind that she evidently misled them? If so, it’d be good to hear it.

Someone who didn’t fail his audience was Tucker Carlson [quoted in my “Conspiracy” post], who told his viewers exactly what they needed to hear and caught a lot of flak for it from hard-core Trumpists — that Powell wasn’t able or willing to provide any evidence for her ever-more outlandish charges.

It’s good that Powell’s cashiering will presumably take some wind out of her sails, but it’s a disgrace that she ever got within a hundred miles of a president’s legal team, let alone that she was given such a platform to spout her disgraceful nonsense.

It is time for ardent conservative supporters of President Trump, of whom I am one, to let the reality principle intrude.

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