In exchange for a lighter sentence, Sidney Powell has decided to testify against former US President Donald Trump.
On Thursday, former Trump attorney Sidney Powell and Fulton County prosecutors reached a plea agreement in the Georgia state election interference case against the former president and 18 political supporters.
Powell received a sentence of six years’ probation and a $6,000 fine after entering a guilty plea to six misdemeanour counts of conspiring to obstruct electoral procedures. She must also testify against her co-defendants, including her former client, and submit a letter of apology to the state and its citizens.
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She was first suspected of illegally accessing, tampering with, and stealing data from voting equipment owned by voting system manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems in remote Coffee County, Georgia, using a racketeering provision often used to punish organised crime.
Prosecutors claimed Powell collaborated with her co-defendant, bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall, and the computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to copy data and software from Dominion voting machines in Coffee County and send it to a different attorney on the Trump campaign in order to demonstrate the election had been rigged in Biden’s favour. This was detailed in the indictment, which was filed in August. Last month, Hall consented to testify against his co-defendants and entered a guilty plea to five misdemeanour charges.
Prior to the trial’s scheduled commencement on Monday, jury selection for Powell and attorney Kenneth Chesebro was scheduled to start on Friday. Despite the fact that prosecutors are reportedly considering giving Chesebro a plea deal as well, he is now anticipated to be prosecuted alone.
Powell gained notoriety with her threats to “release the Kraken,” a trove of documents she insisted would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election was fraudulent. Powell claimed to have proof that widespread fraud occurred in order to secure Biden’s victory.
The attorney alleged that foreign actors hacked the Dominion Voting Systems machines, which are used in Georgia and several other states, and employed “computerised ballot-stuffing” to turn those states in favour of Biden. Powell maintained that the computers’ nature had “rendered virtually invisible” the evidence.
In August, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed a RICO Act complaint against Trump and his associates, alleging that they had planned to engage in “criminal enterprise” to rig the 2020 election. The fourth round of accusations against the former president were made at the time. Hall and Powell are the only two defendants who have so far agreed to plea bargains out of the 19 who initially entered not guilty pleas.
