Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Donald Trump and a co-defendant in his election interference case in Georgia, pleaded guilty Thursday to six misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to interfere with the 2020 election.
As part of the agreement read out in court, Powell will serve six years of probation—12 months for each count—pay $8,700 in fines and restitution, and testify against her co-defendants. That means she’ll now be a state witness against the former president, making her the most high-profile Trump associate to flip on her former boss.
She also turned over an apology letter to the people of Georgia for trying to illegally overturn the state’s election results in 2020.
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Powell met with Fulton County prosecutors late Wednesday, when she came clean about her involvement in what District Attorney Fani Willis has called a widespread, mob-like conspiracy to violate the most fundamental American democratic principles. She reached the plea deal just a day before her trial was set to start on Friday along with co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who drafted several legal memos outlining how Trump would utilize Republican fake electors to run parallel Electoral College votes in case some states managed to forcefully flip the election results.
Powell infamously spewed election conspiracies that involved Venezuela, Cuba and China, and was set go to trial for her role in assembling a team of conspiracy theorists who entered rural Coffee County’s election offices and accessed government voting computers.
In court on Thursday, Powell raised her right hand and swore to tell the truth before going over the terms of the plea deal. She remained light-hearted, cracking a joke when prosecutors asked her age.
“Sixty-eight, despite my astonishingly youthful countenance,” she said.
She quickly abided by all the terms in the agreement, except for one. When prosecutors demanded that she not own or carry any firearms, she paused and conferred with her attorney. Judge Scott McAfee pushed back on the idea, noting that this is a misdemeanor plea that "may" affect her ability to possess guns.
Powell’s professional reputation has been utterly destroyed in the wake of her effort to lead a nationwide attack on the American legal system, all in the service of trying to delegitimize the 2020 presidential election. She launched what she called a multi-tentacled “Kraken” of lawsuits in state and federal court—all of which failed.
When that didn’t work, she hooked up with a computer forensics firm in Atlanta to plot a secret trip south to the small city of Douglas, where local Republican leadership allowed the team to enter government offices—then tried to cover it up. Key details about the mission were exposed by The Daily Beast.
Weeks ago, another close associate in that political subterfuge operation also pleaded guilty: Scott Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman.
Powell’s last-minute decision to flip shows how the legal situation keeps worsening for Trump, who faces the most serious criminal charges as the alleged ringleader of this racketeering enterprise.
