By
In December 2021, as Sidney Powell’s troubles mounted, Donald Trump turned to a familiar strategy: The former president claimed that he barely knew the former member of his legal team.
“No, she was, she didn’t work for me,” he told conservative media host Hugh Hewitt, adding that while Powell represented disgraced former White House national security adviser Mike Flynn, “she didn’t work for me as per se.”
The Republican didn’t literally say, “Sidney who?“ but that appeared to be the subtext.
Nearly two years later, in the wake of Powell pleading guilty in Georgia to election-related crimes, Trump is trying the same line again. From a missive published to his social media platform roughly 24 hours ago:
“Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLLEN, AND OUR COUNTRY IS BEING ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED BECAUSE OF IT!!! Despite the Fake News reports to the contrary, and without even reaching out to ask the Trump Campaign, MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS.”
The same online message proceeded to include several sentences about Powell’s work on Flynn’s behalf, and the pride Trump feels about the corrupt pardon he gave the retired general.
So to recap, the former president would have the public believe that Powell simply believed the conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat, but she never had a role on his team. There are, however, a few glaring problems with this pitch.
The first is that the claim is demonstrably wrong. In fact, as regular readers might recall, the week after Election Day 2020, Trump publicly and in writing boasted about Powell becoming a member of his “truly great team.” Four days later, Team Trump celebrated Powell’s over-the-top rhetoric at a press conference, touting her as part of the then-president’s “elite, strike force team.”
The second problem is that this wasn’t Powell’s only role. Even after she parted ways with Rudy Giuliani, Powell remained a member of Trump’s inner circle. Indeed, as he grew desperate to keep power after his defeat, she made multiple visits to the White House, and Axios reported that among Trump aides, there was a “consensus” that the then-president was “listening to Sidney Powell more than just about anyone who is on his payroll, certainly more than his own White House Counsel.”
The Washington Post later reported that Powell and Flynn even tried to convince Trump to appoint her as some kind of special counsel, which would’ve granted her wild goose chase “the imprimatur and resources of the federal government.” The bipartisan House Jan. 6 committee added that these lobbying efforts very nearly worked, and Trump actually wanted Powell to serve as a special counsel before the White House’s counsel’s office scuttled the idea.
Or put another way, it’s a little late for the former president to pretend he barely knew her.
But let’s also not lose sight of the larger pattern. As we’ve discussed, after Steve Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury — the first time, not to be confused with his more recent indictment — Trump acted as if he barely knew Bannon, saying he’d merely worked “for a small part of the administration.”
He had plenty of company. In late 2019, Trump described then-U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland — part of “a small cadre of ambassadors who enjoy direct and frequent access to Trump” — as “a really good man” and a “great American.” Soon after, when Sondland got caught up in the Ukraine scandal that led to the then-president’s first impeachment, Trump said, “Let me just tell you, I hardly know the gentleman.”
A month earlier, Trump said he didn’t know Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas after their arrests, despite his previous interactions with them.
What’s more, after his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was indicted, the then-president argued, in reference to the former vice president of the Trump Organization, “Michael Cohen was a PR person who did small legal work, very small legal work.”
Around the same time, in the wake of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Trump reportedly told associates he “barely knows“ Mohammed bin Salman.
When Paul Manafort was indicted, Trump’s former campaign chairman became some random staffer “who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.” When Flynn was forced to resign in disgrace, Team Trump decided he was “a former Obama administration official” who did some “volunteer” work for the president.
Carter Page was described as someone Trump “does not know.” George Papadopoulos was dismissed as a “coffee boy.” Trump World even tried to downplay its association with Cambridge Analytica, the Trump campaign’s data firm.
Now, Powell "was not" a member of the Republican's legal team, despite the fact that Trump explicitly told the public that Powell was a member of his legal team.
Let this be a lesson to Trump’s associates: If you run into trouble or become inconvenient, your loyalty will not be rewarded.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.