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Donald Trump laughed at his former attorney Sidney Powell over her “crazy” 2020 election conspiracies and compared them to something from Star Trek, according to the new legal filing submitted by special counsel Jack Smith in the former president’s federal election interference case.
New details about the inner workings of Trump’s alleged plot to overturn the 2020 election were revealed in the bombshell document, unsealed on Wednesday, including how even the former president thought Powell had appeared “unhinged” at a now infamous November 2020 press conference.
In the briefing, Powell wildy and falsely claimed voting machines in contested states such as Michigan had been designed using software developed on orders from the deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to steal elections.
Conspiracy theorist Powell was also mocked at the time for saying she was going to “release the Kraken” to prove “president Trump won this election in a landslide.”
“What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China and the interference with our elections here in the United States,” Powell said, accompanied at the podium by Rudy Giuliani.
“The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized coding systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chávez.”
Though not named in Smith’s legal filing, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson is referred to, citing how the host invited Powell on his show to talk through her evidence in more detail. She never did.
“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,” Carlson said at the time, as quoted in the document.
“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.”
According to Smith’s legal document, Trump had been watching Carlson’s show and acknowledged to one of his staffers he thought Powell “appeared unhinged in the press conference.”
Trump then confided in the two unnamed staffers that Carlson “had ‘eviscerated’ or ‘destroyed’ [Powell].”
In a further humiliation, Trump allegedly put Powell on speakerphone during a call to explain herself while ridiculing her in front of his staffers.
“While [Powell] responded, the defendant placed the call on mute and to [redacted] and [redacted] mocked and laughed at [Powell] called her claims “crazy” and made a reference to the science fiction series Star Trek when describing her allegations,” the document alleges.
Powell’s conspiracy theories were too much for even Trump to swallow, Smith’s document adds: “The defendant agreed that he had not seen anything to substantiate [Powell’s] allegations. Nonetheless, the defendant continued to support and publicize [Powell’s] knowingly false claims.”
Trump sent two tweets promoting Powell’s failed lawsuit alleging electoral fraud in Georgia in the days after the press conference, the court documents allege.
Smith is using Trump’s interactions with Powell as evidence he was “acting as a candidate, not as President” when he allegedly tried to overturn the election.
Last year, Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to interfere with elections in the Georgia election interference case after reaching a deal with the prosecution.
Following her guilty plea, Trump tried to distance himself from Powell, claiming she was “never” his attorney.
“Despite the Fake News reports to the contrary … MS POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform last year.
He was quickly mocked as footage of the press conference with Giuliani resurfaced, where the disgraced former prosecutor introduced Powell as an attorney for Trump and the Trump campaign.
