Sidney Powell, a prominent conservative lawyer who backed former US president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, on Thursday pleaded guilty and could testify against Trump and others in election racketeering case in Fulton County, Georgia.
Powell, 68, who was set to go on trial on Monday, is the second of the 19 defendants to plead guilty in the case, in which Trump is also charged. She agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, meaning she could detail at trial her interactions with him and his inner circle after the election. She is also barred from communicating with codefendants, witnesses and the media until the case is over.
Powell appeared before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to plead guilty to six misdemeanor counts of intentionally interfering with the performance of election duties. The agreement reached with prosecutors means she will avoid the most serious racketeering charge, a felony carrying up to 20 years in prison.
Photo: AFP
A person familiar with the situation said close advisers to Trump were surprised by the news that Powell had decided to plead guilty, but were not concerned that any testimony or other cooperation she would provide would hurt his defense.
Under her deal, Powell faces a sentence of six years of probation — 12 months per count — and a US$6,000 fine and US$2,700 in restitution. She was also required to write an apology letter to Georgian residents.
As part of the deal, Powell on Wednesday night gave a recorded statement about her actions, prosecutors said.
The guilty plea is “hugely significant,” said Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University. “Powell may very well be a central person in the overall alleged RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] conspiracy. She could quite possibly be a damaging witness against Donald Trump.”
When asked about the Powell plea, Trump’s Georgia-based attorney Steve Sadow said in an e-mail: “Assuming truthful testimony in the Fulton County case, it will be favorable to my overall defense strategy.”
No trial date for Trump has been set in Georgia. Trump is separately facing federal charges in Washington that he conspired to obstruct the 2020 election results. Powell matches the description of one of the unindicted co-conspirators, but she has not been charged in that case.
If Powell testifies, she would likely be questioned closely about some of her election fraud claims that had no apparent basis in fact. Powell was an architect of the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged by voting-machine companies and foreign hackers. Shortly after the election she appeared at a press conference alongside Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, where she alleged a plot to swing the election to US President Joe Biden that involved voting-machine tampering and Venezuela.
She was kicked off the campaign legal team in late November 2020, but continued to press false election fraud claims and advise Trump. Vowing to release the “kraken” — an allusion to the ancient mythological monster — Powell pursued multiple failed election contests in courts across the nation to try to overturn Biden’s wins in battleground states.
In mid-December, she and other conservative activists clashed with White House officials during an Oval Office meeting with Trump. Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel at the time, told congressional investigators that he had pushed back on a proposal to appoint Powell as a special counsel to probe voter fraud claims.
Her guilty plea focused on her role in conspiring to unlawfully access election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, and interfere with the duties of the county’s election director at the time, Misty Hampton, a codefendant. Hampton has pleaded not guilty.
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