President Trump’s legal team seems bent on taking down not just Trump, but the entire Republican Party with it.
Having failed to make its case in several courts across the country, Trump’s legal team has begun to push baseless conspiracy theories that allege massive voter fraud. One of the many problems with this strategy is that it distracts from a real problem: Georgia’s two Senate run-off elections. Even worse, these accusations of fraud have actually begun to undermine Republicans’ chances in Georgia to a debilitating degree.
This weekend, attorney Sidney Powell claimed she was going to “blow up” Georgia with the “Kraken” of evidence that she refuses to give to anyone — even the rest of Trump’s legal team. She went on to accuse Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of accepting “financial benefits” to use Dominion Voting Systems, which she claims was used to switch nearly 7 million votes for Trump to President-elect Joe Biden. In other words, Powell accused Georgia’s Republican officials of actively working against the leader of their party.
Hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters will believe her. Indeed, immediately after Powell made her accusation, hundreds of pro-Trump users vowed on Twitter not to vote for either Georgia Republican senators because of Kemp’s alleged corruption. While Twitter may not be real life, this fiasco did prompt Donald Trump Jr. to urge his father’s base to show up in full force for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
It seems others close to the president have woken up to the damage Powell is inflicting as well, because Giuliani and Ellis released a statement this weekend clarifying that Powell does not represent Trump and that she is not an official member of the presidential legal team.
This would be a good start if it weren’t for the fact that Giuliani and Ellis appeared alongside Powell just a few days ago and allowed her to claim that “communist money” was behind the conspiracy against Trump. Not to mention the fact that Giuliani and Ellis have been floating similarly ridiculous conspiracies in an attempt to push the election into the Supreme Court or House of Representatives.
At this point, it’s impossible to determine just how badly Powell (and everyone who has entertained her reckless fearmongering, including Trump himself) has hurt Loeffler and Perdue. Hopefully Republicans can flip the script and focus on Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock’s radical past and Democrat Jon Ossoff’s political inexperience. But there is no doubt that the Trump legal team has demoralized a certain number of Trump supporters in Georgia who are now convinced their own state is working against them. Conservatives should just hope it doesn’t cost Republicans the Senate.
