Sidney Powell, former attorney to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case — and agreed to testify against other defendants, a group that includes Trump.
Powell was an active player in efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, including in Georgia. Powell made false and unsubstantiated claims claiming fraud in the election and filed unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the 2020 results in battleground states, including Michigan and Georgia.
A grand jury in August charged Powell with seven counts, including two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud and one count each of violating Georgia’s racketeering law, conspiracy to commit computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy and conspiracy to defraud the state.
Powell will avoid jail time and instead serve six years on probation, pay $2,700 in restitution fees and a $6,000 fine, write an apology letter to the people of Georgia, and testify against other defendants in the case. The terms of the plea deal also prohibit her from talking to the media about the case.
In total, 19 defendants, including Trump and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, were charged in the wide-ranging racketeering case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Other women charged include former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, ex-celebrity publicist Trevian Kutti, former Coffee County Republican Party chair Cathy Latham and ex-Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton.
Some of Powell’s charges stem from a January 2021 breach of Coffee County’s voting equipment that prosecutors say Powell and other defendants, including Latham and Hampton, committed to bolster their election fraud claims.
Powell reached a plea bargain with prosecutors days before her trial with another co-defendant, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, was set to begin. In September, her attorney downplayed Powell’s involvement in the election interference case and argued that Powell should be tried separately from other defendants.
Powell is the second defendant in the Georgia case to plead guilty. Ex-bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy in late September. Hall, who pleaded guilty to charges resulting from the Coffee County breach, also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors as part of his deal.
Powell’s testimony in other defendants’ trials could provide even more insight into the highest levels of the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Powell spoke at official Trump campaign news conferences, including the infamous Four Seasons Total Landscaping news conference, where she made outlandish claims that foreign countries, including Venezuela, were hacking U.S. voting technology and that billionaire George Soros and the Clintons were involved. Voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems has sued Powell and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for defamation and entered into a $787 million settlement with Fox News earlier this year.
Powell also participated in meetings in the White House and Oval Office, where she advocated for Trump to seize voting machines via executive order. One meeting, first reported by Axios, devolved into an hours-long screaming match between several top Trump allies in which Powell accused top advisers of being “disloyal.” The New York Times reported in January 2021 that Trump weighed appointing Powell as a special prosecutor to investigate election fraud but did not follow through.
Kutti and two other defendants are charged in the case brought by Willis with intimidating two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, whom Trump and his allies falsely accused of interfering in the vote counting. Both women, who are Black, said they received harassment and threats in the wake of the election. A federal judge found Giuliani liable for defaming the two women; a civil trial this December will determine damages.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.