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Sidney Powell, one of the most prominent election deniers in President Donald Trump’s orbit, has pleaded guilty to six counts of election interference related to her attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Her guilty plea, which came just days before jury selection in her case was set to begin, is bad news for Donald Trump and the other 16 co-conspirators who have been charged with trying to deny President Joe Biden his victory in the Peach State.
Most importantly, as part of the agreement with prosecutors, she is required to “testify truthfully” in future trials and has to turn any documents in her possession over to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis upon request.
In addition, Powell will also serve six years of probation and has to pay a fine of $6,000 as well as $2,700 restitution. Finally, she has to write a letter of apology to Georgia voters.
She is the second of the co-conspirators to plead guilty to Conspiracy to Commit Intentional Interference with Performance of Election Duties. Last month, bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five counts of the same misdemeanor.
Powell gained prominence in the aftermath of the 2020 election when she concocted increasingly unhinged theories to bolster Trump’s Big Lie.
Naturally, her efforts to steal the election from now-President Joe Biden caught the eye of Fox News, which often gave her airtime on the network even though its own anchors thought Powell and her claims were nuts.
Fox later paid the price for helping promote some of her conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems when it settled a defamation lawsuit with the voting machine manufacturer and had to pay the company nearly $1 billion.
However, at the time, Powell’s often-bizarre appearances caught the attention of Trump, who brought her into the inner circle of his confidants tasked with overturning the election results.
Therefore, she likely was privy to lots of information that could prove to be damaging to the former president when he goes on trial next year.
Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, another attorney involved in attempts to overturn the election results, invoked their right to a speedy trial.
Now, Chesebro will be the only defendant in the trial. However, it seems possible that we might see Powell on the witness stand.
In any case, this is not a welcome development for Trump. Especially in Georgia, where there were so many codefendants, there was always a greater potential for some of them to flip and work with the prosecution to stay out of jail.
And each one of them adds more pressure on the others because it could strengthen the case against the remaining defendants with potentially damning testimony.
It remains to be seen whether Powell is just the first domino to fall in this case or whether the others will continue to stick with the former president.
