Election-fraud conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell pressed by Australian reporter: 'Do you ever hear yourself and think that it sounds ridiculous?'

• An Australian reporter recently pressed Sidney Powell over her baseless election claims.
• Powell faces defamation lawsuits from voting-tech companies over her role in propagating the claims.
• A US judge ruled on Wednesday that she engaged in "historic and profound abuse" of the legal system.

During an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's two-part series "Fox and the Big Lie," Sidney Powell struggled to respond to errors that the correspondent Sarah Ferguson pointed out in her claims and threatened to end the interview.

Powell was one of several public figures who propagated the "Big Lie" that mass voter fraud cost Donald Trump the 2020 election. The voting-machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic have filed defamation lawsuits against Powell over her involvement in spreading the baseless conspiracy theory.

At one point during the interview, Powell responded to a line of questioning by asking Ferguson if she worked for Smartmatic and saying she was confused about why Ferguson had come to interview her.

"Because you've made a series of very strong allegations against Smartmatic and against Dominion containing many errors of fact," Ferguson responded.

Shortly after, Powell tried to stop the interview, saying it was "wholly inappropriate" because of pending litigation.

After returning to finish the interview, Powell stuck by her baseless claims about widespread election fraud.

"I am saying that thousands of Americans had some role in it, knowingly or unknowingly," Powell said. "It was essentially a bloodless coup where they took over the presidency of the United States without a single shot being fired."

When Powell claimed that the fraud had been planned for at least three years, Ferguson asked, "Do you ever hear yourself and think that it sounds ridiculous?"

"No, I know myself very well. I've been in me a long time. I know my reputation. I know my level of integrity," Powell replied.

Powell formerly served as a federal prosecutor and represented Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor who pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI investigators in 2017 and was later pardoned by Trump.

On Wednesday, a US judge ruled that Powell and Lin Wood, another attorney who worked with Powell to sue election officials, had engaged in "historic and profound abuse" of the legal system.

Their case "was never about fraud - it was about undermining the People's faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so," the ruling said.