Discipline case against Dallas ‘Kraken’ lawyer loses appeal

DALLAS — An appeals court has dismissed a disciplinary case against Dallas attorney Sidney Powell in connection with her legal work for former President Donald Trump seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

The decision, issued Wednesday by a three-judge panel in Dallas, cites clerical errors in legal filings by lawyers for the State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline in its case against Powell, who has denied wrongdoing.

In February 2023, Judge Andrea Bouressa, a Collin County judge appointed to hear the case which was filed in Dallas, also dismissed the State Bar’s case based on the same paperwork errors.

Claire Reynolds, spokeswoman for the State Bar’s Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel, said the Commission for Lawyer Discipline has not yet decided whether to appeal the matter further.

“We’re very appreciative that the court ruled like the law said they should rule,” Robert Holmes, Powell’s attorney, said on Thursday when reached by phone.

Powell, he said, is not available for an interview.

In late November 2020, after the states certified the results of the Nov. 3, 2020 general election, Powell filed numerous federal lawsuits against state election officials to prevent the certification of results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

In a 2020 interview about the election lawsuits, Powell said she would “release the Kraken,” a reference to the sea beast in the 1981 movie “Clash of the Titans” and its 2010 remake.

The State Bar alleged in March 2022, however, that Powell “had no reasonable basis to believe the lawsuits she filed were not frivolous.”

Specifically, the Bar alleged that a document attached to the Georgia election lawsuit that Powell claimed was “undated” was “altered to remove the date.”

Powell, in a written statement to the court, said even though her name is on the lawsuit, she did not draft the suit or compile or attach any of the exhibits, and relied on other lawyers to download the exhibits before they were filed. The dates on the exhibits, Powell’s lawyers said, were cut off by mistake.

“Reason, common sense, and all rational policy considerations dictate against finding an ethical violation for what is obviously a mistake by good lawyers working on a massive filing under extreme time pressures,” Holmes, Powell’s attorney, wrote in arguments to the appeals court in September 2023.

The Fifth Court of Appeals this week agreed, and found that the State Bar had failed procedurally in its efforts to discipline Powell.

“There is no competent summary judgment evidence that Powell had actual knowledge that the pleading included false information,” wrote Justice Dennise Garcia, on behalf of herself and justices Maricela Breedlove and Nancy Kennedy. “Dishonesty involves something more than carelessness or inadvertent conduct.”

Wednesday’s ruling criticized the State Bar’s own filings in the disciplinary case which included mislabeled exhibits. The Bar had asked the court to consider its evidence and arguments despite the errors, but the court declined.

“The Bar employed a ‘scattershot’ approach to the case, which left this court and the trial court ‘with the task of sorting through the argument to determine what issue ha[d] actually been raised,’” Justice Garcia wrote. “Therefore, under these circumstances and on this record, we conclude the trial court did not err in granting Powell’s no-evidence motion for summary judgment.”

In October, Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors in Georgia’s election interference criminal case in which former President Trump is also charged. She received probation, agreed to cooperate in the investigation, and was ordered to write an apology for her role in the case. 

Powell’s apology was one sentence long: “I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” she wrote, according to published reports.