‘Few lawsuits breathe more lies than this one’: Lawyers eviscerate Sidney Powell election lawsuit

'The allegations are little more than fevered rantings of conspiracy theorists built on the work of other conspiracy theorists’

Sidney Powell, the attorney who was distanced from the US president’s legal team because she pushed election-related conspiracies, was said to have submitted a lawsuit that “breathed more lies” than most cases seen in court, after she challenged Michigan’s election results.

Issuing a response to Ms Powell’s lawsuit on Thursday, lawyers for the City of Detroit said the lawsuit contained “warped logic”, and dismissed claims that vote machines had been tampered with, among other conspiracy theories.

“Few lawsuits breathe more lies than this one,” said the 45-page court document, which was shared online. “The allegations are little more than fevered rantings of conspiracy theorists built on the work of other conspiracy theorists”.

Lawyers went on to eviscerate the former Trump campaign attorney and her allegations, saying that some complaints had already been dismissed in Michigan’s courts, and others had not been considered by the president’s team because they were “off the wall”.

“If any of the conspiracy theories contained in this case had merit, they would have been brought in those cases or by the Trump campaign legal team,” said the court. “Even the Trump campaign lawsuits have avoided the off-the-walls claims included in this lawsuit."

The case was among two submitted by Ms Powell after she was distanced from the Trump campaign’s legal team last month, because she was said to have pushed its own conspiracies about the election too far.

Both cases, including one in Georgia, were found to be riddled with typos and other inconsistencies, and widely mocked when she published both cases on her website with titles that read: “The Kraken is released on Georgia!" and “The Kraken is released on Michigan!”

Lawyers in Detroit responded to the inclusion of a fictional county in Ms Powell’s case, which she had named Edison County, and said the mistake “became a public embarrassment when it was reported by the press”.

As well as a bruising assessment of her allegations, the court document went on to warn that Ms Powell wanted “nothing less than a court-ordered coup d’état."

"The fact that the Complaint is frivolous does not mean the lawsuit is not dangerous to our democracy,” it added.

According to analysis by the Associated Press, six cases brought by the US president and Republican allies in Michigan have now either been rejected or dropped.

On Wednesday, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, appeared alongside several witnesses to pressure Michigan lawmakers into supporting their claims.

The state has, however, already certified Mr Biden’s victory over the Republican president there, with the Democrat securing a 154,000 vote margin. 

This article was updated on January 28 to correct an error stating that it was judges who made the comments. It was city lawyers.