Sidney Powell, one of Donald Trump's co-defendants in Georgia election conspiracy case, pleads guilty
A second co-defendant with Donald Trump in the Georgia election conspiracy case, Sidney Powell, pleaded guilty Thursday to a half-dozen misdemeanors dealing with a conspiracy to interfere in the 2020 election.
Powell, an election lawyer who baselessly claimed widespread election fraud in 2020, had been charged with racketeering and six other counts as part of a wide-ranging scheme to overturn the election so Trump could remain in power. She was initially charged with tampering with election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia.
She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties. Powell agreed to testify in future trials in exchange for serving six years of probation, a $6,000 fine and paying restitution of $2,700.
Powell is one of 19 co-defendants charged in the case, which alleged a broad racketeering conspiracy. Other portions of the conspiracy included the recruitment of fake presidential electors to vote for Trump despite President Joe Biden winning Georgia, lying about election results to state officials and in court records, and soliciting public officials to violate their oaths of office.
Legal experts said Powell's agreement to testify against others in the case is "very significant" because she dealt at length with Trump, lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others charged in the conspiracy.
"I think it's very significant because she is one of the people who was closest to Trump in many of these alleged nefarious activities, and as part of the agreement, she must testify truthfully against Trump as well as the other defendants,' said John Banzhaf, a George Washington University law professor who has been following the case closely. "So it is a major victory for Fani Willis and certainly a major concern for Trump."
Powell is the second co-defendant to plead guilty in the case, after bail bondsman Scott Hall.
The other 17 co-defendants have all pleaded not guilty. Powell’s guilty plea came days before her trial was scheduled to begin Monday. Another co-defendant, lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who is charged with developing the scheme to recruit fake electors, still has a trial scheduled Monday.
Prosecutors charged Powell with conspiring with Hall and others to access election equipment without authorization and hired computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to send a team to Coffee County, to copy software and data from voting machines and computers there.
The indictment said an unnamed person sent an email to a top SullivanStrickler executive and instructed him to send all data copied from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Coffee County to an unidentified lawyer associated with Powell and the Trump campaign.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sidney Powell, Trump co-defendant, pleads guilty to election conspiracy
