CNN
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Former Donald Trump lawyer Sidney Powell He confessed to the crime A day before his trial in the Georgia election tampering case.
As part of his guilty plea, Powell will admit to his role in tampering with the January 2021 election procedures in rural Coffee County, Georgia. With the help of local GOP officials, a group of Trump supporters accessed and copied information from local election systems in hopes of somehow proving the election was rigged against Trump.
Fulton County prosecutors are recommending six years of probation. Powell must testify at future hearings, write an apology to the citizens of Georgia, pay almost $9,000 in restitution and fines and turn over documents.
Trump, a co-defendant in the Fulton County case, did not appear in Powell’s plea documents and was not mentioned at Thursday’s brief plea hearing.
After the 2020 election, Powell exposed conspiracy theories about alleged fraud and false claims that millions of votes were flipped in a global scheme against Trump involving Venezuela and other foreign powers.
He is now the second person to plead guilty in the vast fraud case. Bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty last month and has agreed to testify at future hearings. 17 other defendants, including Trump, have pleaded not guilty.
Powell admitted to taking action after the 2020 election “for the purpose of intentionally damaging electronic voting markers and indexing machines” and “taking and taking possession of Dominion Voting Systems Corporation’s assets, information, data and software.” New Court filing.
He also admits to hiring a data forensics firm and sending its employees to Coffee County so they could “unlawfully access government computers for the purpose of examining personal voter data, without such selective authority,” according to the filing.
His attorneys vehemently denied prosecutors’ claims that he orchestrated the Coffee County breach. They said at the hearing that prosecutors were “wrong” and that “evidence will show that he was not the driving force behind the incident”.
“This is a major breakthrough for prosecutors,” CNN senior legal analyst Eli Honig said on “News Central.”
“And it’s really important to understand that there’s no such thing as half-cooperation. If you’re a lawyer, you don’t enter into this deal with Sidney Powell because, A, she’s telling the truth, and B. She can credibly testify for you. Put it in front of a jury, and she’s not going to split hairs.” Let’s justify it,” said Honik, a former central government lawyer.
Another Georgia defendant is named in Thursday’s plea documents: Misty Hampton, who was Coffey County’s supervisor of elections during the 2020 election cycle. Powell admits to criminal conspiracy with Hampton and must testify against him if he goes to trial. Hampton pleaded not guilty to seven counts.
Fulton County Judge McAfee repeatedly denied Powell’s proposals to throw out or at least chip away at some of the more serious charges, including the RICO violation.
His most recent ruling came Wednesday night, in which he rejected Powell’s arguments that the indictment violated his First Amendment rights.
The last-second plea drastically changes the trial that was scheduled to begin Friday, with jury selection for Powell and co-defendant Kenneth Chesbro. They both asserted their rights to a speedy trial and became the first courtroom clash in the wider case – but now it appears Chesebro will move forward on his own.
Chesebro pleaded guilty to seven counts related to his role in the fake-voter conspiracy.
Beyond the Georgia case, Powell still faces legal headaches.
He is an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal election tampering case filed against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith. That investigation is still ongoing in recent months, and Powell continues to be scrutinized, CNN previously reported. She was not charged in that case.
In addition, Powell faces massive defamation lawsuits from two voting technology companies that sued Trump for falsely accusing him of rigging the 2020 election. Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic filed lawsuits in 2021, and the cases are still in the pre-trial discovery phase.
This story has been updated with additional Ddevelopments.
