В цьому випадку мабуть слово "лоєрша" таки треба брати в лапки
Legal career
From 1978 through 1988, Powell served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Western and Northern Districts of Texas and the Eastern District of Virginia, where she handled civil and criminal trial work. She was appointed Appellate Section Chief for the Western and then the Northern District of Texas.[9]
In 1993, Powell established her own law firm in Dallas, Texas, aimed mostly at federal appellate practice, including in the United States Supreme Court.[9] Her firm has also handled a number of high-profile class action suits. She has served as lead counsel in more than 500 appeals in the Fifth Circuit courts, resulting in more than 18 published opinions and a reversals rate of approximately 70%.[9]
Powell is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, where she served as president from 2001 to 2002.[9]
Notable cases
Assassination of Judge John H. Wood
In 1979 Powell was one of the prosecutors in the trial of Jimmy Chagra, where he was convicted of continuing criminal violations.[9] Chagra was an American drug trafficker implicated in the May 1979 assassination of United States District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, Texas. In the 1970s Chagra was one of the biggest drug traffickers operating out of Las Vegas and El Paso, and according to one observer, he was "the undisputed marijuana kingpin of the Western world."[10] Chagra was released from prison for health reasons in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 9, 2003, and reportedly placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Chagra died of cancer on July 25, 2008.[11]
Michael Flynn
In 2019 Powell publicly called on General Michael Flynn to withdraw his guilty pleas for making false statements to the FBI, and in June 2019 Flynn released his law firm of Covington & Burling and retained Powell to serve as his lead attorney.[12] Powell's appearances on Fox News to discuss the Flynn case were noticed by President Trump, and the two spoke on several occasions. On the same day it was disclosed Flynn had fired his attorneys, Powell sent a letter[13] to Attorney General William Barr requesting the "utmost confidentiality" and argued that Flynn's prosecution was due to "corruption of our beloved government institutions for what appears to be political purposes." Among other things, she requested that Barr appoint an outsider to investigate. Six months later, Barr appointed Jeffrey Jensen to conduct such an investigation.[14] In May 2020, the Justice Department filed a motion with presiding federal judge Emmett Sullivan to drop Flynn's prosecution.[15] Sullivan did not immediately grant the motion, and Powell later requested a writ of mandamus from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to compel Sullivan to drop the case. After an initial ruling in favor of Powell by a three-judge panel of the Court, the case was appealed to the full Court, which denied the mandamus request in an 8-2 ruling, returning the case to Sullivan's court.[16] Powell had argued to the full Court that Sullivan's role was "ministerial," giving him no discretion but to comply with the Justice Department motion, to which judge Thomas Griffith replied, "It's not ministerial and you know it's not. So it's not ministerial, so that means that the judge has to do some thinking about it, right?"[17] Other judges on the Court also pushed back on Powell's characterization of a federal judge's role.[18] Soon after taking the Flynn case, Powell had accused the Justice Department of prosecutorial misconduct against Flynn; in a footnote to a June 2020 court brief, the department described Powell's allegations as "unfounded and provide no basis for impugning the prosecutors from the D.C. United States Attorney's Office."[19][20]