# Release the Kraken The signature slogan and brand of attorney [[Sidney Powell]]'s sprawling 2020 election-fraud conspiracy theory, which alleged that a single international cabal — involving [[Dominion Voting Systems]], [[Smartmatic]], [[Hugo Chávez]]'s ghost, Chinese hackers, Iranian cyber-operatives, and [[George Soros]] — had flipped millions of votes from Trump to Biden through a secret algorithm. Powell's promise to "release the Kraken" of exposing evidence produced four doomed lawsuits, zero corroborated facts, a $1.3 billion defamation suit, disbarment proceedings, and a Georgia RICO plea deal turning her into a cooperating witness against Donald Trump. It is the most self-refuting conspiracy in the [[Stop the Steal]] cycle — the one whose own creator, in open court, argued that "no reasonable person" would have believed it. ## Origin ### The Phrase Sidney Powell coined "Release the Kraken" in a **November 13, 2020** Fox Business interview with [[Lou Dobbs]]. Asked how the Trump campaign would challenge the election results, she said: *"President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes that were shifted by this software… I'm going to release the Kraken."* The phrase — borrowed from Scandinavian myth and popularized by the 1981 film *Clash of the Titans* — signaled overwhelming, decisive force being unleashed. Within 48 hours it was a MAGA rallying cry. Protesters chanted it at Stop the Steal rallies. Merchandise appeared. Reddit and Twitter lit up. Three days later, **November 16, 2020**, on [[Mark Levin]]'s radio show, Powell delivered the core claim that would define the movement: > "The software was created… in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chávez to make sure he never lost another election after he had a legitimate election contested." Hugo Chávez had been dead for more than seven years. Dominion is a Canadian company. Its software was not designed in Venezuela. None of this slowed the claim's spread. ## The Kraken Lawsuits Between **November 25 and December 4, 2020**, Powell filed four federal lawsuits — dubbed the "Kraken suits" — in: 1. **Georgia** (*Pearson v. Kemp*) — 104 pages 2. **Michigan** (*King v. Whitmer*) — 75 pages 3. **Arizona** (*Bowyer v. Ducey*) 4. **Wisconsin** (*Feehan v. Wisconsin Elections Commission*) ### What they claimed | Claim | Source / evidence | |-------|-------------------| | Dominion machines were built in Venezuela to rig elections | Anonymous "former Venezuelan intelligence official" affidavit; no supporting documentation | | A secret algorithm switched millions of votes | Statistical analyses by cranks, quickly debunked | | Chinese, Iranian, and Serbian actors attacked U.S. election systems via satellite | "Experts" whose backgrounds and qualifications were fabricated or exaggerated | | Dominion and [[Smartmatic]] shared code and fraudulent intent | The two companies are unaffiliated competitors; Smartmatic technology was not used in any swing state | | Massive evidence of fraud existed | None produced in any filing | ### What happened in court All four suits were dismissed within weeks, most on procedural grounds before the judges even had to address the factual claims. The filings contained glaring typos — "district" misspelled repeatedly in the Georgia complaint's opening line. Federal judges described the cases variously as "fantastical," "unsupported," and "strain[ing] credulity." Powell was eventually sanctioned, and she and other attorneys in the Michigan case were ordered to pay legal fees. ### Trump's disavowal The Kraken claims were so extreme that the Trump campaign formally severed ties with Powell on **November 22, 2020**, in a joint statement from [[Rudy Giuliani]] and [[Jenna Ellis]]: *"Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team."* This is a remarkable threshold: Trump's own legal team, which was simultaneously filing nonsense of its own, drew the line at Powell. Trump still met with Powell at the White House in December 2020, reportedly discussing naming her a special counsel to investigate election fraud and seizing voting machines via executive order. The meeting was derailed by White House counsel's office. ## The Dominion and Smartmatic Lawsuits The Kraken's claims inflicted tangible, measurable damage on two private companies, which sued in response: | Plaintiff | Defendant | Amount | Outcome | |-----------|-----------|--------|---------| | [[Dominion Voting Systems]] | [[Sidney Powell]] | $1.3 billion | Ongoing; Powell's defense: "no reasonable person" would have believed her statements were fact | | Dominion | [[Rudy Giuliani]] | $1.3 billion | Pending; Giuliani declared bankruptcy | | Dominion | [[Fox News]] | $1.6 billion | **Settled April 2023 for $787.5 million** | | Dominion | [[Mike Lindell]] | $1.3 billion | Ongoing | | [[Smartmatic]] | Fox News, Lou Dobbs, [[Maria Bartiromo]], [[Jeanine Pirro]], Giuliani, Powell | $2.7 billion | **Fox Corp settled January 2025 for ~$1.6 billion** | | Smartmatic | [[Newsmax]] | Undisclosed | **Settled September 2024** | | Smartmatic | [[One America News Network]] | Undisclosed | **Settled August 2024** | The cumulative legal exposure from Kraken-related defamation — over $5 billion across all defendants — was among the largest in U.S. media history. The Fox settlement in particular represented a watershed: one of the most profitable news operations in America paid nearly a billion dollars because of claims Powell had originated. ## Real-World Consequences ### The Coffee County breach Powell's most criminally consequential act wasn't in the courts — it was in rural **Coffee County, Georgia**. Operatives she helped fund and coordinate gained physical access to Dominion election equipment on **January 7, 2021** (the day after the Capitol attack), copying proprietary election software and data. This was not rhetoric — it was unauthorized access to U.S. election infrastructure, which became a component of the Georgia RICO case. ### The Georgia RICO plea On **October 19, 2023**, Powell pled guilty in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's RICO case against Trump and 18 co-defendants. She took six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to interfere with election duties, received: - 6 years probation - $6,000 fine + $2,700 restitution - Written apology to the people of Georgia - **Cooperation** as a witness against remaining defendants, including Trump The "Release the Kraken" attorney became a state's witness. ### Disbarment Powell faces disbarment proceedings in Texas and was briefly referred to disciplinary authorities in Michigan (where sanctions were imposed) and Washington, D.C. ## Why It Matters ### 1. The Dominion/Smartmatic settlements set a price tag on lying For decades, right-wing media operated on the assumption that falsehoods about private parties were essentially cost-free, because the parties couldn't afford to sue and winning defamation cases was nearly impossible. The Kraken settlements — especially Fox's $787.5M — broke that assumption. It is the largest financial reckoning the right-wing media ecosystem has ever faced. ### 2. "No reasonable person would have believed me" as a defense Powell's defense in the Dominion suit is one of the most self-indicting in American legal history: she argued that her own extraordinary claims about Venezuelan communism and Chinese satellites were so obviously absurd that nobody could have taken them as statements of fact. The same attorney was, simultaneously, telling millions of voters and four federal courts that these claims were literally true. The asymmetry is the whole point — Kraken language is *designed* to be inflammatory to audiences while retaining implausibility as a legal escape hatch. ### 3. The cooperating witness Powell's plea deal converted the most extreme public face of [[Stop the Steal]] into a prosecutorial asset. Her willingness to describe under oath the coordination between Trump, Giuliani, [[John Eastman]], and [[Mark Meadows]] changed the evidentiary landscape of every remaining election-subversion prosecution. ### 4. Kraken as a conspiracy-theory template The Kraken mythology — voting machines, foreign interference, mathematical "anomalies," hidden evidence coming soon — outlived the lawsuits. It was absorbed into [[Mike Lindell]]'s "Cyber Symposium," Kari Lake's 2022 Arizona claims, 2024 pre-emptive fraud allegations, and the ongoing baseline assumption in MAGA politics that Dominion machines are compromised. The Kraken lost every lawsuit and won the culture war. ## Legacy Sidney Powell in 2026 is disbarred or facing disbarment, a cooperating prosecution witness, and financially exposed to billions in defamation damages. The Kraken legally failed at every level. But the conspiracy it popularized — that Dominion voting machines cannot be trusted, that elections are stolen via software, that "the evidence" is always about to be released — is load-bearing MAGA epistemology heading into every election cycle. The Kraken was the Big Lie's most flamboyant costume. The costume came off in court. The Big Lie kept going. ## See Also - [[Venezuela in American Political Rhetoric]] — why the claim needed Venezuela specifically, and the two other American uses of the name - [[Venezuelan History Hub]] · [[Hugo Chávez]] — dead more than seven years when the claim was made - [[Stop the Steal]] - [[SharpieGate]] - [[QAnon]] - [[The Storm]] - [[Sidney Powell]] - [[Rudy Giuliani]] - [[Mike Lindell]] - [[Dominion Voting Systems]] - [[Smartmatic]] - [[January 6 Capitol Attack]] - [[Conspiracy Theories Ecosystem]]