Fogbow

Sidney Powell group raised more than $14 million spreading election falsehoods

In the months after President Donald Trump lost the November election, lawyer Sidney Powell raised large sums from donors inspired by her fight to reverse the outcome of the vote. But by April, questions about where the money was going — and how much there was — were helping to sow division between Powell and other leaders of her new nonprofit, Defending the Republic.

On April 9, many members of the staff and board resigned, documents show. Among those who departed after just days on the job was Chief Financial Officer Robert Weaver, who in a memo at the time wrote that he had “no way of knowing the true financial position” of Defending the Republic because some of its bank accounts were off limits even to him.

Records reviewed by The Washington Post show that Defending the Republic raised more than $14 million, a sum that reveals the reach and resonance of one of the most visible efforts to fundraise using baseless claims about the 2020 election. Previously unreported records also detail acrimony between Powell and her top lieutenants over how the money — now a focus of inquiries by federal prosecutors and Congress — was being handled.

The split has left Powell, who once had Trump’s ear, isolated from other key figures in the election-denier movement. Even so, as head of Defending the Republic, she controlled $9 million as recently as this summer, according to an audited financial statement from the group. The mistrust of U.S. elections that she and her former allies stoked endures. Polls show that one-third of Americans — including a majority of Republicans — believe that Trump lost because of fraud.

Matt Masterson, a former senior U.S. cybersecurity official who tracked 2020 election integrity for the Department of Homeland Security, said Powell’s fundraising success demonstrates one reason so many people continue to spread falsehoods about the 2020 election: It can bring in cash.

Gregg wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:45 pm I'm taking vacation the day she testifies, and will start popping corn and setting out bourbon for a long and amusing day before the sun rises. It will be more fun than peanut butter, ping pong balls, a cat of nine tails and Asian hookers with long nails and sharp pointy high heels.

To say we are looking forward to this somewhat understates the fact.

Gregg wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:45 pm I'm taking vacation the day she testifies, and will start popping corn and setting out bourbon for a long and amusing day before the sun rises. It will be more fun than peanut butter, ping pong balls, a cat of nine tails and Asian hookers with long nails and sharp pointy high heels.

To say we are looking forward to this somewhat understates the fact.

Gregg wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:32 pm Okay, so now I'm making the important rent/buy decision on a trampoline.

noblepa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:01 pm I suspect that Squidney thinks that this will be another opportunity to spout off her lies.

To some extent, that will be true, but I'm sure that the questioners will be more interested in the efforts made to coordinate the coup attempt on 1/6, than they will be in hearing again, how Dominion, Smartmatic and Cesar Chavez stole the election.

Chilidog wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:35 pm Are you sure it wasn't Chi Chi Gruevera?

Gregg wrote: ↑Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:11 am People in Cincinnati who watched that show recognized a lot of real people in radio here in the characters. WLW did Grain and Commodity price reports every day at noon well into at least the 1990s and they guy who did the crop report was pretty much Les Nesman.

Dr. Johnny Fever was very close to the real Frank Wood Jr whose father owned the FM station WEBN that was at the time in a disused house in a seedy part of town. It played mostly classical music and jazz until "Dr. Michael Bo Xanadu" started doing the Jelly Pudding Show.

For years the station did a lot of things to act like it was much bigger than it was. It had several fictional employees that were in fact all Frank Wood, Frank Jr or the daughter Robin who eventually became one of Cincinnati's best know radio people, she had a voice that was liquid sex. They also used to run fake commercials for businesses that didn't exist to fill airtime, which became a running gag that might still go on. Every year on April 1st they used ads and fills from these fake businesses to broadcast the annual Fool's Day Parade, live from "Hyde's Meadow", a parade that didn't actually happen and every year a few people would show up for. In time, the Hyde Park neighborhood did have an actual parade.

Anyhow, WKRP rings real true to people who grew up in Cincinnati.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEBN