Giuliani distances Trump campaign from attorney Sidney Powell

Just days after appearing alongside her during a press conference for President Trump's "elite strike force team," Rudy Giuliani is backing away from attorney Sidney Powell, saying in a statement on Sunday that she is "practicing law on her own" and "is not a member of the Trump legal team."

In a joint statement, Giuliani and Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis added that Powell is "also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity."

During the Thursday press conference, Giuliani and Powell made several outlandish claims, including that Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who died in 2013, helped rig the election against Trump because he approved election technology that was used in some states. Giuliani told reporters during the event that Powell was a member of Trump's legal team, and Trump also tweeted on Nov. 14 that she was working for him.

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Powell received some pushback from the conservative media on Thursday night, with Fox News host Tucker Carlson saying he asked her to provide proof of election fraud but "she never sent us any evidence despite a lot of requests, polite requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing she got angry and told us to stop contacting her."

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.