One of the looniest of serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’ Sydney Powell has agreed to a plea deal with Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, pleading guilty to the racketeering and other charges in her trial that was due to start on Monday. She is the second person to take a plea deal in that wide-ranging case that involved charges against 19 people including SSAT.
Former Donald Trump lawyer Sidney Powell has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case in Fulton county, just days before jury selection for her trial was scheduled to start.
Powell, charged alongside Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia, entered into a plea agreement on Thursday to become the second defendant to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges and cooperate with prosecutors in the sprawling criminal case.
Powell was sentenced to six years’ probation, a $6,000 fine and $2,700 in restitution to the state of Georgia. She will also have to write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia and to testify truthfully at trial – perhaps the most consequential part of the plea agreement.
The move marks a major victory for the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, who secured Powell as a state witness just days before the start of jury selection in her trial. Powell was seen pleading guilty on a live video of court proceedings.
The tangible punishments are negligible though I expect that she will also face disbarment from legal bodies. The key item is her agreement to testify truthfully at SSAT’s trial. Since she is a serial liar and fabulist like her hero SSAT, one has to assume that she has already told prosecutors enough things of value that merited them giving her a slap on the wrist, that she cannot, as a witness, lie any more.
The next person whose trial on racketeering and other charges is due to start on Monday is another SSAT crackpot lawyer advisor Kenneth Chesebro.
The indictment accuses Chesebro of writing memos in early December 2020 suggesting that alternate electors from key states – where former President Donald Trump’s campaign contested the election outcome – could cast votes for Trump, despite the fact he had lost in those states. Chesebro also allegedly helped coordinate logistics of this plan.
He may be the next domino to fall. He only has time until Monday to make a deal.
Her plea is an admission of guilt in her defamation case brought by Dominion and SmartMatic. She’s cooked -- stick a fork in.
Whoever is writing the latest season of “Trump” certainly knows how to ratchet up the tension. The only question is, will they stick the landing like “The Sopranos”, or will it be another “Game of Thrones” and end with a weak plot twist like a sudden unexpected death? Fingers crossed.
But now she has fallen down the ranks with a startling display of rationality.
They must have multiple corroborating witnesses for anything they’d have her testify about- her testimony by itself is pretty worthless.
I really dislike pleas deals. It’s far too much like coercion. I think people should either plead innocent and have a trial, or plead guilty, and ask for mercy from the court. I think that agreeing the punishment for a guilty plea beforehand leads to miscarriages of justice, in both directions.
@ mikey, 4:
“her testimony by itself is pretty worthless”
If there’s one thing we should all have learned in the last few years, it’s that if a woman says something happened, even (especially) if she *doesn’t* say it under oath in a court, then that is EVIDENCE and you have to believe her. I don’t make the rules.
@ Paul Durrant, 5:that’s a feature, not a bug .
What a silly claim. Nope.
@ 6 sonofrojblake
Lol. Cool story bro.
https://www.elle.com.au/culture/sexual-assault-justice-system-australia-26944
@ 9: it’s hard to tell, it seems you’re agreeing with what I said. Maybe be more articulate in your support next time?
(Caveat: I am not a lawyer. If there are lawyers among us, especially ones familiar with the Georgia legal landscape, please set me straight.)
The thing about plea deals, is that they appear to let a defendant off easy. This is true to an extent, but there’s a catch: prior to the deal, the defendant typically has to disclose every crime they’ve ever committed, and these are recorded. (Given that this is a state prosecution, this may have been limited to crimes committed in Georgia.) And there’s always a contingency on the defendant’s continued cooperation and truthful testimony. Should she fail to perform on her end of the deal, Sydney could wind up doing a long stint in the Georgia prison system, since she already plead to crimes, and confessed to still more.
Chesebro has followed suit.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/20/politics/kenneth-chesebro-georgia-election-subversion/index.html
Not surprised at that last… while it was always hard to tell with Powell, Cheesebro always seemed to give off the impression of somebody smart enough to actually understand that what he was saying was bullshit and that he was just hoping to get away with it for long enough. Once he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to bullshit his way out of it, a plea bargain would make perfect sense from his standpoint.
Of course, this sort of event was the sort of thing RICO was made for… once you get all the conspirators separated and start peeling off the ones less willing to go to jail for the conspiracy, things tend to get worse for the people at the top because the people running the trial now have testimony from all the other people involved. Which is often what the people who take plea deals first count on, that if they take a deal early they can get sweetheart deals because there isn’t enough really hard evidence yet. (See also a case from around here, with Karla Homolka taking a deal and turning Crown evidence against Paul Bernardo, while later evidence that came out (such as the video tape surfacing) proved that Homolka was a lot more actively involved than she was given credit for when the plea deal was proposed.)
I suppose it might do if you either don’t follow the link, or are a complete numpty.