Former White House Ethics Lawyer Says Sidney Powell Should Be Charged With Fraud

Former White House Ethics Lawyer Richard Painter, who served during the Bush administration, says that Sidney Powell could be criminally prosecuted for fraud due to her fundraising techniques. Painter claims that the fundraising efforts relied heavily on convincing voters that there was rampant "fraud" in the election, and even with campaign finance where things are more lenient you aren't allowed to receive money by deceiving individuals. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this possibility.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Former George W. Bush White House, White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, said recently that he believes that Sidney Powell, the Kraken Donald Trump election lawyer for a short period of time, should be charged with fraud and should be criminally prosecuted. Here's what Painter says. We know now that Sidney Powell raised over 14 million this year through her groups defending the Republic. She's got two of 'em. One of 'em is set up as a nonprofit. The other, I, I think is like a political action committee or something to that effect. And Powell raised money for both groups claiming that she was taking on this massive election fraud that was taking place, that of course didn't actually happen. And so Richard Painter argues that what we're looking at here is not a free speech issue, which a lot of people would want to think it is. Because we're talking about money being involved because of her lies that becomes commercial speech and commercial speech is highly regulated. Think false advertising, right? That is effectively what Sidney Powell was doing to fleece her supporters, according to Painter, and get them to give her money for something that didn't exist.

It's like if you went to the store and you bought all these new fancy, wonderful products that promised you, hey, we can get all the stains outta your clothes and you use it and it doesn't remove anything. Turns out those little pods are filled with nothing more than water. You would have a claim against the company for false advertising. Well, Painter makes the case that this is what Powell did. Give me your money and I will overturn the election and expose all of the fraud. But one, overturning the election is not possible. Two, the fraud doesn't exist. But she continued to spread these lies and she continued to raise money based off of them. That sounds like commercial speech to me, that's not free speech. That's not even campaign speech. And if it were campaign speech, if she were running for office, the rules would be a little more relaxed because after all, as we all know, you're pretty much allowed to lie in campaign emails and campaign speeches and campaign ads, which honestly is a real shame. It's part of one of the biggest problems with our elections, you know. If we could actually sue people for slander, liable, defamation, things like that in, is their political ads, from their political ads?

Hell, we might actually see some real changes in the way these ads are created. But Sidney Powell was doing neither of those things. She wasn't raising money for a charity. She wasn't running for office. She wasn't campaigning for anything. She was getting people to send her money so she could, question mark, because that's the part we don't know. Because as I've talked about in the past, both here and in my other channel, we don't know where the money went and it's not just we, it's the people who worked for the groups that she created. They don't know where the money went. The financial records of these groups have of course been subpoenaed by a grand jury and I think by the time all of this is over Sidney Powell might end up in jail. One state just fined her. The state of Florida might be considering criminal charges against her for a similar action. And it all comes back to lying to individuals, taking their money, to spend it on something that doesn't actually exist.