Like most Americans, we were introduced to lawyer Sidney Powell on Nov. 19, 2020, almost two weeks after it was clear that Joe Biden had decisively beaten President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Powell showed up at a Trump campaign press conference at RNC headquarters in Washington along with Rudy Giuliani and another lawyer, Jenna Ellis.
This was Rudy’s second infamous post-election press conference. The first was at Philly’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping on Nov. 7, which occurred just as the Associated Press and the TV networks all projected Biden’s victory.
You remember, this press conference is where Rudy’s brown hair dye dripped down both sides of his face as he and Powell and Ellis spun lies and craziness about Hugo Chavez and stolen votes. All three of them would later be indicted in the Georgia state election interference case. Powell would also become Co-Conspirator 3 in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case filed in Washington.
On Tuesday, Powell was still on social media claiming that the 2020 presidential vote was crooked. On Wednesday, an Atlanta judge rejected her final efforts to toss out the seven state felony charges against her for election interference on two specious grounds: one that it was a federal election and should not be handled in state court and the other was her First Amendment right to free speech. Her trial was set to begin on Monday.
No way, wrote Judge Scott McAfee Wednesday afternoon, the charges stood. The next morning, yesterday, Powell had a change of heart and pleaded guilty in open court before McAfee to six misdemeanors and promised to cooperate.
This is good for Powell, who will serve no prison time and is eligible under Georgia law to even have her conviction expunged at some point in the future. It’s also good for prosecutor Fani Willis, who can rely on Powell to rat out the others in the case, including Trump.
And Powell has dirt on Trump. Smith described her as “an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud [Trump] privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Nonetheless, [Trump] embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s disinformation.”
Powell was at the Dec. 18, 2020 Oval Office meeting where there was a plot discussed to use the power of the federal government to seize voting machines in states that Trump narrowly lost, like Georgia. The cabal, which included disgraced National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, went on for hours and continued in the White House residence.
Powell has first-hand knowledge of this, as it was her plan. Hopefully, she will be cooperating with Jack Smith as well.
The conspiracy of the sitting president to stay in office by canceling the election that he lost was very real and it exploded in its final act, the Jan. 6 sacking of the Capitol. Powell was there for much of it and can offer prosecutors the insider view.
Trump assumed that all his stooges would remain blindly loyal to him and refuse to testify against him. Powell has proven him very wrong. Is she crazy, as he thought? Probably, but she still likely has the goods on his crimes to defraud the American people and democracy itself.
Trump can lead his rivals in the polls for the GOP nomination, but he can’t outrun the law.