Texas bar association weighs stripping law license from 'Kraken' lawyer Sidney Powell

Former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell, infamous for her threat to “release the Kraken” in her quest to prove conspiracy theories of voter fraud in the 2020 election, will face an investigatory hearing in November to assess whether her role in the monthslong campaign to overturn the election should cost her her law license, Michigan’s attorney general announced on Thursday.

“Texas’ Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel has granted an investigatory hearing related to Powell’s bar license, set for November 4,” according to a news release from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office.

Powell was one of nine attorneys who on Wednesday were sanctioned by a federal judge in Michigan. The judge, Linda V. Parker, determined that their lawsuit that sought to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan was based on lies and conspiracy theories, and ultimate was a violation of the legal code of ethics that warranted sanctions.

Parker penned a 110-page scathing opinion that said Powell — as well as the eight other attorneys, including Donald Trump supporter Lin Wood — committed “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.” She added that their claims of a stolen election were not based on any evidence but rather “speculation, conjecture, and unwarranted suspicion.”

“This case was never about fraud,” Parker wrote. “It was about undermining the People’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so.”

Parker ordered the attorneys to pay back the legal fees they cost the state of Michigan with their frivolous lawsuit and also requested that the “appropriate disciplinary authority” where each lawyer is barred  review whether their actions warrant “possible suspension or disbarment.”

Because Powell is barred in Texas, the Texas Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, which operates as the state bar association’s “law office,” per its website, will hold a hearing.

It’s unclear when the other lawyers sanctioned in the case will face their own disciplinary hearings. As for Powell, the sanctions imposed by Parker are not her only legal peril.

She also faces billion-dollar lawsuits from two voting machine companies — Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic USA — whom she falsely claimed were part of a nonexistent effort to steal the election from Former President Donald Trump.

Earlier in August, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., said the defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems against Powell — as well as Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — could proceed.

“Powell cannot shield herself from liability for her widely disseminated out-of-court statements by casting them as protected statements about in-court litigation; an attorney’s out-of-court statements to the public can be actionable, even if those statements concern contemplated or ongoing litigation,” judge Carl Nichols wrote in his opinion, knocking down Powell’s assertion that her lies about Dominion amounted to political speech and thus were protected.

Giuliani has already had his law license in New York suspended for his role in the effort to overturn Trump’s loss.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.