Trump under fire: Sidney Powell poised to testify against former boss

Donald Trump's former lawyer Sidney Powell's testimony against the former president could spell significant legal trouble for him, writes Dr Alex Vickery-Howe.

THEY GOT HER.

Sidney Powell, the lawyer who made insane claims about voting machines and an undead Hugo Chávez is turning on Donald Trump. We all remember Sid, right? She was the woman raving next to Rudy Giuliani while his face melted. This is a significant domino in the fall of the Trump cartel and a confirmation – as though we needed it – that she and Rudy were always lying about "rigged voting machines".

At the time, Republicans asserted that Rudy and Sid had to be in possession of some evidence, some smoking gun that would prove Joe Biden and the zombie ex-president of Venezuela had been up to a nefarious and supernatural scheme to rob Trump of his electoral glory. If they didn’t have evidence, fans argued, then Rudy and Sid were genuinely crazy. Well, that’s how Occam’s razor works: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Now, conclusively, we know that Rudy and Sid were indeed loopier than a pair of hula hoops. To add a further layer of tomfoolery, Sid has argued that reasonable people would never have believed her bullshit in the first place. This is her legal defence.

Given the choice between "dumb conman loses election" and "dead dictator conspires with voting machine company to rig the U.S. ballot process, several years after his funeral", it’s fair to say that most half-reasonable humans would absolutely choose the first option. For those in doubt – and if you find yourself in genuine doubt, it might be time to leave Twitter – the machines in question tended to vote for Trump anyway.

If the machines were rigged (spoiler: they weren’t) they must’ve been rigged in Trump’s favour. God, I’d love to see that conspiracy theory take off.

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Meanwhile, Georgia was counted three times, including by hand. There was no evidence whatsoever that anything or anyone – least of all a ghostly Chávez – had interfered in the electoral process. We don’t live in an episode of Scooby-Doo. Sid now has to apologise to the people of Georgia for wasting their time. She should further apologise to Biden, to the legitimate government of the U.S., and to sensible people the world over. Idiocy like this leads to insurrections.

And, before I move on, the 2020 Election wasn’t even close. Trump is a loser. He has always been a loser. This man has failed at everything – the airline company, the mortgage company, the casinos, the steaks, the vodka, the marriages, even the affairs – and the weird mythology that has developed around this scrotum of a man (thank me for not using a hyperlink here) is just sad. I still have friends who say "oooh, but he is clever, Alex".

Is he? Then why does he suck? Why does every business he touches turn to disaster? Why is it that Biden won by a massive margin? Trump literally got his ego handed to him by the sweet old man from Up. Well, not literally.

But it’s finally official and straight from Sid’s mouth. All this talk of "rigging" was the feeble cry of a desperate slob, aided by the stupidest co-conspirators since Otis and Miss Teschmacher. Poor Donnie didn’t even win the popular vote in 2016. Hillary solidly kicked him in the buns and Biden finished him. He’s like a shark that keeps moving forward, but instead of spilling blood in the water, he leaves a trail of debt, unemployment and cackling world leaders.

At this point we need a new word because I don’t think a combination of "embarrassing", "humiliating" or "spectacular dumbfuckery" even covers it. I promised myself I wouldn’t, yet again, bring up the two things I’m obsessed with, but please indulge me. Exhibit B. That press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping! How are there any Trump supporters still on board after that debacle? Who could possibly hold their head up high and say, "yeah, I’m with them! These guys seem legit!"

The sight of a panic-stricken Rudy squinting into the heavens and wondering where the hell the hotel went never fails to make me laugh out loud. That should’ve been it, right there: the final nail! Trump and co were too stupid to book the right venue for their shameful, haphazard, last-minute, post-defeat propaganda.

Let’s circle back to Exhibit A. The first exhibit, the one exhibit to contextualise them all, is that Trump was sued for tricking people into giving up their savings for his sham university courses. Why didn’t that raise a red flag? Why didn’t the world wake up before the presidency, before the riots, before Washington caught fire?

The answers are complex, of course. Nobody talks about class enough. Nobody talks about how cruelly many American citizens have been left behind, how neglected they are socially and economically, and how they’ll grab hold of anyone who pretends to care about them.

Many Trumpkins have died in their leader’s name, both through direct acts of lunacy and through the COVID misinformation he spread and they swallowed. This is a nation in dire need of less ammunition and more access to education and mental health services. I mean this genuinely. Kicking down on Trump’s supporters stopped being funny when the prospects of his re-election strengthened in the midst of multiple legal troubles.

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Does it matter then that Sidney Powell is going to testify against Donnie and his fine feathered finks when so much madness has failed to make an impact before today? Actually, I think it might. This could be the piece that strikes the next piece, that strikes the next, that strikes the next, from Powell to Giuliani, to Kushner, to the Trump successors and, at long last, all the way up to the golden throne.

I, for one, can’t wait to hear what Sid says next. Maybe it’s not just Chávez who haunts this story? Ivana’s golf course grave has dodgy written all over it – no, that part is probably a joke, but there is a slight chance that we really have entered the Scooby-Doo universe, where there’s no sense in clinging to logic or reason. Maybe Velma will pull Rudy’s melted mask off and discover he was the creepy groundskeeper all along. Four Seasons was the vital clue.

It's not really any madder than our current corner of the multiverse.

After all, and despite everything, Sidney Powell still has a licence to practice law.

Dr Alex Vickery-Howe is an award-winning playwright and social commentator. He teaches creative writing, screen and drama at Flinders University. You can follow Alex on Twitter @AlexVickeryHowe.