Donald Trump mocked attorney Sidney Powell’s wild tale of a rigged presidential election and called it “crazy,” former Trump administration aide Hope Hicks told the House Jan. 6 committee, according to its report released Thursday.
At an infamous press conference shortly after the 2020 election, Powell stood alongside Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani, as his hair dye apparently dripped down his face, and baselessly insisted voting machines were corrupted due to foreign influence. Powell claimed that machine software was “created in Venezuela” at the direction of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013.
Trump, surrounded by allies, spoke on the phone to Powell in the Oval Office the following day, Hicks told the committee.
“During the call, Powell repeated the same claims of foreign interference in the election she had made at the press conference. While she was speaking, the President muted his speakerphone and laughed at Powell, telling the others in the room, ‘This does sound crazy, doesn’t it?’” Hicks testified, according to the committee’s report.
A month later, Trump announced in an Oval Office meeting that he was considering naming Powell special counsel to investigate imagined election fraud, The New York Times reported. He even talked about getting a security clearance for Powell, who was at the meeting, sources told The Associated Press.
Dominion Voting Systems later filed massive lawsuits against Powell, Giuliani, Fox News, OAN and others, accusing them of outright lies about the company’s machines.
Neither Powell nor Trump could be reached for comment.