The Potential Threat to Trump: Sidney Powell’s Plea Deal
In an unexpected turn of events, Sidney Powell, the lawyer who made headlines for her baseless claims about the 2020 election, has pleaded guilty to election interference charges in Georgia. What’s more, she has agreed to testify against other defendants in the case, including former President Donald Trump. This marks the first time that someone closely associated with Trump’s efforts to remain in power has reached a cooperation deal with the authorities.
For the first time, prosecutors have the cooperation of someone who was closely involved in Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in office after his election defeat. Just two weeks after Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election, the lawyer Sidney Powell rallied to the cause of keeping him in office during a news conference at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee.
Standing next to Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, Ms. Powell laid out a preposterous conspiracy theory. She told the world that a voting machine company called Dominion had worked with a liberal financier and Venezuelan intelligence to flip votes away from Mr. Trump to his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The baseless assertions ultimately lay at the heart of a series of federal lawsuits that Ms. Powell filed challenging Mr. Trump’s defeat. And even though the Trump campaign later disavowed her, chiding her claims as unbelievable, she soon returned to Mr. Trump’s orbit, taking part with him in an Oval Office meeting to discuss a brazen plan to seize the country’s voting machines and effectively rerun the election.
On Thursday, in a move that caught the former president and his advisers by surprise, Ms. Powell pleaded guilty to election interference charges in Georgia and agreed to testify against the other defendants in the case — Mr. Trump among them.
The unexpected development was a significant victory for Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., who filed the election case this summer. But it was arguably even more important for Mr. Trump, marking the first time that anyone who was closely tied to his attempts to stay in power had reached a cooperation deal with the authorities.
It remains unclear what Ms. Powell might say about Mr. Trump if called upon to testify against him. But if she takes the stand in his election trial in Georgia, she could shed light on a number of gambits he undertook to stay in power despite the will of the voters.
Word of her agreement, which emerged without warning during a court hearing in Atlanta on Thursday, raised other questions: Would she also lend her help to the federal prosecutors who filed their own election case against Mr. Trump in Washington — one in which she appeared as an unindicted co-conspirator? And would any other figures in the Georgia case be open to accepting similar deals with prosecutors? (Ms. Powell pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and was sentenced to probation.)
Two people with ties to Mr. Trump’s orbit suggested that Ms. Powell might be a more problematic trial witness than it seems, given her history of outlandish statements. Mr. Trump’s Georgia-based lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, said in a statement that “assuming truthful testimony” in the case, “it will be favorable to my overall defense strategy.”
Others, however, suggested that prosecutors must be confident that she has compelling evidence they can use against her co-defendants.
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