Georgia Republican Official Named as Plaintiff by Sidney Powell Never Agreed to Take Part in Lawsuit
A GOP county chairman who is listed as a plaintiff on ex-Trump attorney Sidney Powell's typo-filled fraud lawsuit says he never agreed to take part in the legal action.
Georgia's Cobb County Republican chair, Jason Shepherd, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday morning he and his associates need "more information" before they can sign on to Powell's election fraud lawsuit. Powell has brought lawsuits in both Georgia and Michigan which allege widespread voter fraud issues such as forged ballots and observers being unable to watch vote tabulation. But in addition to the paperwork being riddled with formatting and typographical errors, one of the GOP plaintiffs never even agreed to be listed on the lawsuit.
Shepherd is one of seven plaintiffs on Powell's "massive election fraud" lawsuit which challenges the results showing Joe Biden soundly defeated Trump earlier this month. Speaking with the Journal-Constitution Thursday, Shepherd released a statement in which he says he "never agreed to be a part of her complaint.
Shepherd added, "Guess this is what happens when you wait until the last minute."
"We (Sidney Powell's associate and I) discussed the Cobb GOP being a plaintiff, and I was open to it considering a multitude of troubling issues we've seen just in Cobb County, but needed more information to at least make sure the executive officers were in agreement to us being a party in the suit," Shepherd wrote in the statement.
"By the deadline last night, I didn't have that information nor had I received the consensus from our other officers, so I called Powell's associate to state we were unfortunately not going to be able to be a part of the suit, but I'd be more than happy to work with her and Sidney Powell and let her know of any other irregularities I saw in Cobb County. She confirmed she understood. Guess this is what happens when you wait until the last minute. My assumption will be our officers will likely want to stay in rather than withdraw, but reaching everyone today to discuss may be difficult being it's Thanksgiving."
The Trump campaign has put distance between itself and Powell after she appeared alongside Rudy Giuliani and other legal team members several times over the past month. In one appearance at a press conference last week, Giuliani and Powell highlighted Trump's "multiple pathways to victory" by flipping states including Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania. No state has accepted the legal challenges of the president's team so far.
Powell was even mocked by Fox News host Tucker Carlson last week, who claimed his team pressed her for proof and she "got angry and told us to stop contacting her."
Newsweek reached out to Powell and the Trump campaign Thursday morning for additional remarks about the ongoing election fraud legal challenges.
