Ever since Sidney Powell led one of then-candidate Donald Trump’s efforts to cancel the 2020 election, he found himself in the aspect of a series of potentially ruinous trials. prominent lawyer of the MAGA.
For months, a federal investigation conducted from Washington, D. C. , has not been easy documents and asking potential witnesses questions about Powell, according to 3 other people familiar with the matter. Similarly, a separate investigation into Powell’s anti-democratic activities took a stand in the Sunshine State earlier this year and has already produced effects and punished Powell and his far-right group.
The federal investigation, which has not been reported in the past, examines the finances of Defending the Republic, an organization founded through Powell to fund his “Kraken” demands to cancel the 2020 election, the resources said. With the case, a grand jury was formed and subpoenas and document requests were sent to several other people in September.
The defense of the Republic’s finances has already led to an investigation and settlement with Florida’s charitable regulator, which paid a $10,000 fine in September from an agreement similar to its request for contributions and its lack of registration as a charity in the state.
Sidney Powell speaks at a press convention about the effects of the election in Alpharetta, Georgia, in 2020.
In secretly recorded conversations released through Powell’s former best friend Lin Wood in days, former Overstock. com and Defending the Republic CEO Patrick Byrne accused Powell of pocketing the organization’s budget to pay for his defense against a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit filed. opposed to it through Dominion Voting Systems.
Neither Powell nor representatives of Defending the Republic asked for comment on the story. Neither Powell nor Defending the Republic have been charged with a crime.
Powell created Defending the Republic with wonderful fanfare in December 2020 and indexed a who’s who of the global election conspiracy in Trump’s favor in his incorporation documents. The group’s board originally included Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn, his brother Joe and Q- The enthusiastic anon Lin Wood, another Trump-linked lawyer who recently began fighting with Powell. Republic’s defense attorneys claim Wood was mistakenly placed on the list of board members and was removed from the log files.
Overstock. com founder Patrick Byrne, who served as CEO of Defending the Republic, said he had his own considerations about the group’s finances.
In a phone call with Wood that Wood surreptitiously recorded, Byrne claimed that Byrne, Michael Flynn and Flynn’s brother, Joseph Flynn, left the organization in April after Powell refused to authorize an audit of the Republic’s defense accounts.
“I gave him a list of things he should leave blank and told him to find a listener,” Byrne told Wood on the call.
Wood released the audio of the call last week as a broader feud with unique friends like Flynn and Powell. Byrne showed the authenticity of the call to The Daily Beast.
Patrick Byrne
According to Byrne, Powell had won a wave of donations after the election after being congratulated through mega-popular right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, but donations were given randomly, infrequently in the form of a dollar bill or a quarter Byrne claims to have discovered that Powell had amassed a fortune in contributions, between $20 million and $30 million, but did not provide evidence to support that claim. the state of Florida lists only $7 million in profits for the group.
The defense of the republic’s budget went on to pass in favor of Trump that donors were likely considering, according to Byrne; instead, he claimed they were spent on paying Powell’s legal bills, which faced disciplinary issues in court and a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting. Systems.
“It won’t be called ‘Defending the Republic,'” Byrne said in the recording. “It’s going to be called ‘Defending Sidney Powell. ‘”
Dominion’s lawyers also raised questions about the finances of Defending the Republic, which the voter generation sued along with Powell. In court documents filed in May, Dominion accused Powell of “raiding [Defending the Republic funds] to pay for his legal defense. “
Dominion’s lawyers claimed in the filing that Powell began soliciting donations for the Defense of the Republic before officially incorporating the organization. This sequence, they argued, meant that donations to the organization “could not have been kept in a bank account” and “necessarily would have been kept in a bank account. “consolidated into bank accounts controlled through [Powell]. “
“Queen of Kraken” Sidney Powell is now on Trump’s “forbidden list”
While running for CEO of Defending the Republic, Byrne said he was involved, Powell was employing the cash for her and potentially broke the law in the process. he had been tempted to “spend a dime on” Powell and alert law enforcement.
“Sydney is running this like a scam,” Byrne told Wood.
Defending the Republic’s finances first came to the attention of Florida regulators after Powell founded the organization in November 2020, when the government won a complaint and issued a subpoena to web hosting service GoDaddy to obtain data on the organization’s website.
At a press convention in June, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said Defending the Republic “solicits contributions from the state of Florida or other persons within the state of Florida” on the Internet “without having filed in the state of Florida” as a charitable organization.
On August 24, Defending the Republic paid a $10,000 fine as part of a settlement with the Florida government related to its fundraising.
As a component of the deal, Powell’s organization agreed to sign on as a charity in Florida and presented a projected budget of more than $7 million. The settlement agreement also required Defending the Republic to submit an audited monetary report of the organization’s operations between December 2020 and July. 2021 until November 30, adding a balance sheet and a list of expenses and income.
“Our number one task is to protect Florida consumers from fraud, and I am proud of our department’s work in achieving a thorough investigation into the defense of the Republic,” Fried said in a statement to the Daily Beast. “We are committed to keeping all organizations operating as responsible charities under Florida law. No matter who you are, whether you are big or small, whether you are a bad actor, a scammer or a former lawyer of a former president, the regulations apply to you, and we will apply the law equally.
During Fried’s tenure as Florida’s agriculture commissioner, his branch conducted high-profile investigations involving charities accused of wrongdoing. In 2019, Fried investigated client court cases about a charity, We Build the Wall, led by Brian Kolfage and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. The investigation led to a federal indictment of Kolfage and Bannon for fraud and money laundering (Trump later pardoned Bannon).
Virtually all of Powell’s ongoing legal ups and spending on development stems directly from his determination toward Trump and his cause of clinging to strength despite Biden’s decisive victory in 2020. Now she has been abandoned and well excluded from her homes and personal clubs.
“I didn’t seek to touch the president in any way long before he left office,” Powell told The Daily Beast last September. “My search is simply that of truth. Other American people are fed up with the lies of the government and the media. “
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