Sidney Powell, who filed multiple 2020 election-related lawsuits, has paid $2,700 in restitution to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office as part of her plea deal with prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia.
“This office, and this legislature, and this government are invested in doing every single day the necessary work to keep our election secure,” he said.
Ms. Powell hasn’t publicly commented on the payment as of Nov. 2.
The plea was issued as she was slated to go to trial on Oct. 23 alongside attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who similarly pleaded guilty to related crimes last week. And like Ms. Powell, Mr. Chesebro agreed to testify against other defendants in the case.
As for the other more than a dozen defendants in the case, including former President Donald Trump and Mr. Giuliani, trial dates haven’t been set. Both the former president and former New York City mayor have pleaded not guilty.
Trump Responds
Late last month, President Trump said Ms. Powell was never officially part of his election team, while she has made similar statements in recent court filings.“Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged & stolen,” the former president wrote on Truth Social.
“[Ms. Powell] was not my attorney and never was.”
If she had been his lawyer, “she would have been conflicted,” President Trump said.
“Ms. Powell did a valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn, but to no avail. His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless. He was an innocent man, much like many other innocent people who are being persecuted by this now Fascist government of ours, and I was honored to give him a Full Pardon,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social.
However, there was confusion about that comment as some mainstream media outlets alleged that Ms. Powell was actually his lawyer because she partook in a news conference in late 2020 alongside former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jena Ellis. Ms. Ellis, who was also charged in the Georgia case, recently pleaded guilty in exchange for a plea deal with prosecutors in late October.
But Ms. Powell, in court papers earlier this year, wrote that she “did not represent President Trump or the Trump campaign” because she never signed an “engagement agreement” with the campaign in any official capacity. What’s more, Ms. Powell’s name was never on any Trump campaign court filings related to the 2020 election.
Compelled to Lie?
After Ms. Powell’s guilty plea, Harvey Silverglate, lawyer for John Eastman, one of the co-defendants, told The Epoch Times that he believed Ms. Powell was actually innocent and was trying to escape a wrongful conviction based on what he described as an unfair law.“This is how prosecutors operate. They charge, they overcharge, including charging innocent people,” Mr. Silverglate said.
“It’s much more difficult to beat conspiracy cases than substantive criminal cases. And the reason is that if the government can convince a jury that you were involved with these people in a conspiracy, rather than in a lawful undertaking, anything any member of that conspiracy did, you are responsible for.”
Mr. Silverglate has questions about what Ms. Powell’s intentions would be if she were called to testify.
“Is she going to tell the truth, or is she going to say something to satisfy Fani Willis?” Mr. Silverglate asked. “She can say that she was lying previously, and now she’s telling the truth, which, of course, would not be the truth.”
After the 2020 election, Ms. Powell produced a significant number of media headlines for her predictions regarding the election, as she claimed that she would “release the Kraken” regarding voter fraud. Multiple lawsuits that she brought were thrown out by judges at various levels.
