Sidney Powell pleads guilty to trying to overturn Trump’s Georgia loss, agrees to testify at codefendant trials

When you’ve been flagged four separate times in a few months, you’re currently on a trial to find out what happened to your anonymous business, and facing the very prospect of being found. -again prone to infamy, any given day has the potential. to bring really bad legal news. And on Thursday, Donald Trump some of the extremely bad mix.

That happened when a lawyer Sidney Powell he pleaded guilty to trying to reverse Trump’s loss in Georgia in the 2020 election. Specifically, Powell pleaded guilty – just one day before jury selection was scheduled to begin in her trial – to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to willfully obstruct the performance of election duties, and as in exchange, he received six years of probation, a $6,000 fine, and an order to write a letter of apology to Georgia and its residents. Perhaps most important? Powell agreed to testify against his accusers at future trials.

As The Washington Post notes, Powell is the second of Trump’s 18 defendants in the Fulton County racism case to accept a plea deal, the other being a bail bondsman Scott Hall. But Powell’s candidacy appears to pose a much greater threat to Trump, as she is “the first person with direct ties to Mr. Trump. [the ex-president] and his inner circle to plead guilty in the Georgia case,” a development that could have “far-reaching implications” for the ex-boyfriend.

Powell was a top adviser to Trump who was briefly in his inner circle of confidantes in the chaotic weeks after Election Day 2020 as the former president tried to stay in office. She attended an infamous meeting in the Oval Office on December 18, 2020, which featured a shouting match – and near blows – between a top White House lawyer and Michael Flynn, who was a former national security adviser who was helping Trump try to reverse his case. In that meeting, Trump emphasized seizing voting machines from key counties, using the National Guard to potentially rerun the election and even hiring Powell as a special counsel to investigate the election. . In the end Trump took none of these steps.

What’s unclear is how high up the Trump campaign was aware of Powell’s actions regarding Coffee County and whether she will include co-defendants such as the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani or Trump himself when she testifies.

“This is someone who was at level zero of these charges and a lawyer who is pleading guilty,” John Fishwick, former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, told the Associated Press. “This is very important.”

Trump pleaded not guilty to the Fulton County charges in August, shortly after becoming the first vice president in history to be shot.