Sidney Powell Pleads Guilty In Georgia Election Case

Topline

Far-right attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty Thursday to criminal charges against her in Fulton County, Georgia, for helping former President Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 election, becoming the second defendant in the 19-defendant case to take a plea deal one day before her trial was scheduled to begin.

Attorney Sidney Powell, leaves the Federal Court in Washington on June 24, 2021.

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Key Facts

Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts for conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties stemming from her efforts to overturn the 2020 election and role in aiding a breach of election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, which was reduced from the seven felony counts she was initially charged with.

The attorney took a negotiated plea deal, in which she’ll be sentenced to six years of probation, a $6,000 fine and pay $2,700 in restitution.

She will also have to write a letter of apology to the people of Georgia, which she already submitted to the court Thursday, and “truthfully testify” during trials of her co-defendants.

Jury selection in Powell’s trial—which was to occur jointly with ex-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro—was set to begin Friday.

Powell previously pleaded not guilty to the charges against her and had unsuccessfully sought to dismiss them ahead of the trial, arguing she was not involved with the efforts in Coffee County.

Powell follows co-defendant Scott Hall, who became the first defendant in the case to take a plea deal in September.

What To Watch For

Chesebro is scheduled to still go to trial beginning on Friday, and has not yet taken a plea deal in the case. The trial had been scheduled to continue for likely three to five months, and it remains to be seen if the one-time Trump attorney will similarly decide to take a deal rather than facing a jury. Chesebro faces potentially years in prison if convicted of the counts against him—as did Powell, if she hadn’t taken the plea deal—as the racketeering charges brought against all defendants alone carry a potential prison sentence of between five and 20 years.

What We Don’t Know

How Powell’s guilty plea will affect her co-defendants. Powell’s agreement to “testify truthfully” in other trials in the case could hurt others’ defense—including Trump, as the indictment alleges she took part in a December 2020 meeting at the White House in which she encouraged Trump to seize voting machines and appoint her as special counsel to prosecute election fraud. (The Trump campaign publicly distanced itself from Powell in the aftermath of the election, after initially claiming she was working with the campaign.) It could also affect other co-defendants who have been charged with allegations stemming from the efforts in Coffee County, if their cases go to trial.

Key Background

Powell was one of the primary figures on the right pushing baseless accusations of election fraud in the wake of the 2020 election, bringing multiple lawsuits in battleground states challenging the results—all of which failed—and publicly claiming the results had been compromised due to purported issues with voting machines. Those false allegations led her to be involved with efforts to breach election equipment to examine voting machines, with her PAC Defending the Republic paying forensics firm SullivanStrikler a reported $26,000 to travel to Coffee County to access voting equipment. The Trump allies accessed the equipment in Coffee County and copied and distributed data, which experts have said could make the voting systems more vulnerable to attacks. Though Powell previously claimed the group had been invited by officials to access the data, the election official who granted them access did not have authority to do so and has now been charged in Fulton County, and the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the breach appeared to violate Georgia law.

Tangent

Powell still faces multiple defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic for spreading false claims tying their machines to fraud, which both remain ongoing. Her efforts to challenge the election results also resulted in her and her co-counsel being sanctioned in Michigan for a case she unsuccessfully brought there, as well as an ultimately unsuccessful effort by the State Bar of Texas to have her disbarred.

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