Georgia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Trump’s Allies Pledged Loyalty to Him. Until They Didn’t.

      by

      The former president is facing down Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer, in a Manhattan courtroom, while other ex-loyalists are cooperating in a case against him in Georgia.Donald J. Trump could not hide his anger. Sitting at the front of a crowded New York courtroom this week, he folded his arms tightly across his chest. He tossed his head and scowled. He stared into the middle distance and scrolled through his phone.His ire was directed at Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had taken the witness stand 15 feet away and had promptly called Mr. Trump a liar. Mr. Cohen has told his share of lies as well. But in court, he swore he had done so “at the direction of, in concert with and for the benefit of Mr. Trump.”Mr. Cohen’s two days of dramatic testimony this week provided the first glimpse of what could become a familiar scene: Mr. Trump, sitting at a defense table, watching as a lawyer who once did his bidding now cooperated with the authorities seeking to hold him to account.On the same day Mr. Cohen began his testimony, Jenna Ellis, who had sought to help Mr. Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election, pleaded guilty to state charges in Georgia. She was preceded by Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, both lawyers who worked with Mr. Trump’s campaign, both now expected to cooperate in the criminal case that the Georgia prosecutors brought against him.The circumstances surrounding the Georgia criminal case and the Manhattan civil fraud trial are vastly different. But near the center of each case are lawyers who pledged public fealty to Mr. Trump — until they very publicly did not.Mr. Trump has long relied on a phalanx of legal attack dogs to speak on his behalf, or to do or say things he would rather not do or say himself. And because Mr. Trump has such a tenuous relationship with the truth, those lieutenants often spread a message that prosecutors and investigators consider to be outright lies. Lies about an election he lost, a relationship with a porn star he may have had and a net worth he may not quite have achieved.Now those statements are ricocheting back at Mr. Trump as he contends with the civil trial in New York, brought by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, and with four criminal indictments up and down the East Coast. And while Mr. Trump is quick to blame his betrayers — Mr. Cohen is “proven to be a liar,” he said outside the courtroom this week — his predicament was born from his own lopsided approach to relationships.Mr. Trump has a history of disavowing people who were once close to him and find themselves in trouble. He had long since cut ties with Mr. Cohen — until Tuesday, they had not seen each other in five years — and more recently he distanced himself from the lawyers in the Georgia case. He had also refused to pay their mounting legal bills.Their relationships, a one-way street flowing in Mr. Trump’s direction, appeared to work for a time. But when those loyal soldiers faced their own legal jeopardy, their allegiance to the former president became strained or even shattered.There have been exceptions since Mr. Trump’s split with Mr. Cohen. Mr. Trump’s political action committee has picked up the legal bills for his co-defendants in the federal criminal case involving his handling of classified government documents, as well as those of several witnesses connected to the case.Mr. Trump’s company also agreed to dole out a $2 million severance payment to his longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, and continues to pay for Mr. Weisselberg’s lawyers. Mr. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud and testified at the company’s criminal trial last year, but has stopped short of turning on Mr. Trump.Mr. Cohen was among several in a series of people who Mr. Trump turned to over decades in the hopes they would emulate his first fixer and defender, the lawyer Roy Cohn. “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy,” Mr. Trump told one of his biographers, Timothy O’Brien, in an interview. “He brutalized for you.”That brutality — along with Mr. Cohn’s method of conflating public relations defenses with legal ones, making showy displays in court and accusing the federal government of “Gestapo-like tactics” against Mr. Trump in a 1970s suit alleging housing discrimination — became Mr. Trump’s preferred model for a lawyer.Mr. Cohen has often said that those sort of tactics influenced what Mr. Trump looks for in those who defend him.While it is unclear how useful Ms. Ellis and the other two lawyers will be to the case against Mr. Trump in Georgia, Mr. Cohen has already been tormenting Mr. Trump for the last five years. Ms. Ellis became critical of him publicly in the last several months.Mr. Trump made a point of attending the trial in Manhattan this week to watch Mr. Cohen’s testimony in person.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesFor Mr. Trump, the feud with Mr. Cohen is personal. Although he is running for president and fighting the four indictments, none of those obligations could pry him away from the Manhattan courtroom to watch Mr. Cohen’s testimony. Mr. Trump did not have to attend the testimony, but people close to him say he believes events go better for him when he is present.Mr. Trump’s falling out with Mr. Cohen stemmed from their dealings with the porn star Stormy Daniels.In the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Cohen paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to silence her story of an affair with Mr. Trump years earlier — an affair that Mr. Trump denied had ever taken place.The deal came to light in 2018, and soon, the F.B.I. had searched Mr. Cohen’s home and office. As Mr. Cohen’s life imploded, Mr. Trump began to distance himself from his fixer, and eventually, his company stopped paying Mr. Cohen’s legal bills altogether.Mr. Cohen soon lashed out and began to speak with prosecutors. When he pleaded guilty that year for his role in the hush-money deal, he stood up in court and pointed the finger at the then-president. Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen declared, had directed the payment of the hush money.Although the federal prosecutors declined to indict Mr. Trump, this year the Manhattan district attorney’s office brought charges against him related to the deal, using Mr. Cohen as a potential star witness for a trial scheduled to start in the spring. Mr. Cohen has also testified before Congress that the former president’s company had manipulated financial statements to reach Mr. Trump’s desired net worth. That testimony was the catalyst for Ms. James to open her investigation.When Ms. James’s team questioned Mr. Cohen on Tuesday, he repeated many of the same accusations, testifying that Mr. Trump had directed him to “reverse engineer” annual financial statements to reach the former president’s desired net worth.Mr. Cohen spoke calmly and confidently as he recounted Mr. Trump’s obsession with his net worth.But the Trump team’s cross-examination exposed the perils of relying on a disgruntled former aide, especially one as temperamental as Mr. Cohen.Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on Mr. Cohen’s inconsistent statements about the former president and his own crimes, leading him to admit to having lied a number of times. Toward the end of the second day of cross-examination, Mr. Cohen appeared visibly flustered as he tripped over rapid-fire questions about whether Mr. Trump had personally directed him to inflate numbers on his annual financial statements. Mr. Cohen said he had not, prompting Mr. Trump and one of his lawyers, Alina Habba, to throw their hands up in victory.Ms. Habba also resurfaced a series of glowing remarks Mr. Cohen once made about his boss, further underscoring his about-face.“I think he’s going to be an amazing president”; “I’m the guy who would take the bullet for the president”; “I think the world of him, I respect him as a business man and I respect him as a boss,” Ms. Habba emphatically read, as she circled the courtroom with a hand-held microphone like a preacher delivering a sermon.This appeared to delight Mr. Trump, who turned to watch Ms. Habba while draping his arm over her empty chair.Before Mr. Cohen completed his testimony on Wednesday, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Justice Arthur J. Engoron to dismiss the case, citing Mr. Cohen’s contradictions.Justice Engoron denied the request, and Mr. Trump stormed out of the courtroom.Kate Christobek More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis takes plea deal in Georgia election subversion case

      by

      Jenna Ellis, the lawyer for Donald Trump who was also facing criminal charges for attempted election subversion, is taking a plea deal, pleading guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.In Fulton county on Tuesday, Ellis became the fourth of 19 defendants to plead guilty as part of the wide-ranging racketeering charges into Trump and allies in the 2020 election in Georgia. Last week, both Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty before their trials were to start. Scott Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman, has also pleaded guilty.Ellis pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting false statements and writing. She was sentenced to five years’ probation, ordered to pay $5,000 restitution to the Georgia secretary of state, 100 hours of community service, and to write a letter of apology. She also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors testify truthfully against the remaining defendants in the case.During a plea hearing on Tuesday, prosecutors detailed how Ellis appeared at a December 2020 hearing in the Georgia senate with Rudy Giuliani and Ray Smith in which they made numerous false allegations about voter fraud in Georgia.“The false statements were made with reckless disregard to the truth,” prosecutors said, and were part of a plan to get the Georgia legislature to set aside the valid results of the presidential elections.Ellis came to tears as she addressed the court, saying she was relying on information that more experienced lawyers provided her and should have investigated further. Had she known what she knows now, she said, she would have declined to represent Trump.She added that she looked back on “the whole experience with deep remorse”.“I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information,” she said. “What I should have done, but did not do, your honor, was make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true. In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence.”She ended by apologizing to the court and the people of Georgia.All of the defendants who have pleaded guilty have received similar plea deals.Ellis had been charged with violating state anti-racketeering laws and solicitation of violation of an oath by a public officer. She was granted $100,000 bail and previously pleaded not guilty.Ellis has been an outspoken critic of her former friend in recent months, calling Trump a “malignant narcissist” in an interview back in September.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”The 38-year-old was speaking on her show on American Family Radio, a rightwing evangelical network run by the American Family Association, a non-profit that by its own description has been “on the frontlines of America’s culture war” since 1977.Ellis was a relatively obscure lawyer until she joined the Trump campaign in 2019 after Trump liked her defenses of him on television. Soon, the campaign described her as a “senior legal adviser” despite her lack of experience in election law and minimal legal experience overall.Her cooperation with prosecutors could be particularly bad news for Giuliani, with whom she traveled across the country, appearing at hearings in battleground states convened by state lawmakers to lay out false allegations of fraud. She and Giuliani also tried to convince state lawmakers to appoint alternate sets of electors. Ellis also wrote a memo on 5 January 2021, laying out a strategy for Mike Pence not to count electoral votes from states that had swung the election for Biden, according to the indictment in the Georgia case.Since being indicted, Ellis has complained that Trump was not helping pay legal fees for those charged in Georgia. Earlier this year, she was censured by the state bar in Colorado, where she holds her law license, for her election falsehoods. More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      The Lawyers Now Turning on Trump

      by

      Clare Toeniskoetter and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicOver the past few days, two of the lawyers who tried to help former President Donald J. Trump stay in power after losing the 2020 election pleaded guilty in a Georgia racketeering case and have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against him.Richard Faussett, who writes about politics in the American South for The Times, explains why two of Mr. Trump’s former allies have now turned against him.On today’s episodeRichard Fausset, a correspondent for The New York Times covering the American South.The two lawyers pleading guilty in the Georgia case are Sidney Powell, left, and Kenneth Chesebro.Photos: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters; Pool photo by Alyssa PointerBackground readingSidney Powell, a member of the Trump legal team in 2020, pleaded guilty and will cooperate with prosecutors seeking to convict the former president in an election interference case in Georgia.Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump-aligned lawyer, also pleaded guilty in Georgia.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Richard Fausset More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump faces new peril in federal 2020 election case after lawyer pleads guilty

      by

      Donald Trump’s chances of being convicted in the federal 2020 election subversion case may have increased after his top election lawyer took a plea deal in the 2020 election case in Fulton county and admitted that the effort to create fake slates of electors was fraudulent.The immediate consequence of Kenneth Chesebro’s plea deal is that he could incriminate the former president in Georgia, given one of his plea conditions involved testifying truthfully against other defendants.But Chesebro could also separately incriminate Trump in the federal criminal case in Washington, should the special counsel Jack Smith use his new admission to bolster the case that Trump conspired to defraud the United States in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell also took a plea deal last week, underscoring the remarkable run of victories for the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, who has separately defeated repeated efforts from multiple Trump allies to transfer their criminal cases to federal court.But while Powell’s plea agreement was particularly notable, in large part due to her personal notoriety and her infamous pitch to Trump at an explosive White House meeting to have the military seize voting machines, the development with Chesebro could be more legally significant.The Chesebro-devised fake electors scheme ultimately became the central part of the strategy pursued by Trump and his allies to stop or delay the January 6 congressional certification of the election results.Trump’s eventual plan involved trying to use the existence of the fake electors to pressure his vice-president, Mike Pence, to declare at the certification that the election results in battleground states that Trump actually lost remained in doubt, and could therefore not be counted.At issue for Trump is that Chesebro’s plea deal in Fulton county required him to admit guilt to count 15 in the indictment – that Trump and Chesebro and others violated the law in filing the fake electors certificate – and thereby affirm that the fake electors were indeed fraudulent.The plea deal also required Chesebro to tape a statement for Fulton county prosecutors, evidence that appears to have been sufficiently helpful in proving their cases against the other co-defendants that he was granted an arrangement under which he faced no jail term.It remains unclear how Chesebro’s plea is being viewed by the special counsel, and even if he were subpoenaed to testify in Washington, Chesebro could assert his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.But if Chesebro does testify in Georgia, it could be a boon for the special counsel who would have the ability to use that testimony in their case, and have Chesebro testify about the facts contained within the statements. The contents of the statement are not public, but are almost certain to touch on the fake electors scheme.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the 45-page federal 2020 election indictment, the conspiracy to defraud the United States was described as the use of dishonesty, fraud and deceit to impair the counting and certification of the election results.The admission from Chesebro that the slates, which are being alleged as the vehicle used to commit the conspiracy, were fraudulent could bolster the charge that Trump and his allies fundamentally did use deceit to stop Congress from certifying the election results.After Chesebro took the plea deal, Trump’s lead lawyer told reporters that his “truthful testimony” would help the former president. “It appears to me that the guilty plea to count 15 of the Fulton county indictment was the result of pressure by Fani Willis and her team and the prosecution’s looming threat of prison time,” Steve Sadow said.The lawyer for Chesebro also downplayed his admission. “While Mr Chesebro did take responsibility for conspiracy to commit filing false documents, I want to make something clear: he did not implicate anyone else. He implicated himself in that particular charge,” Scott Grubman said in an interview on MSNBC.But the reality for Chesebro is that he might have little option but to become a cooperating witness against Trump in the federal case. Chesebro was identified as unindicted co-conspirator five in the federal indictment, and prosecutors could pressure him with charges because of his guilty plea. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump fake elector scheme: where do seven states’ investigations stand?

      by

      As Donald Trump faces criminal charges in multiple cases across the country, several states are still investigating a scheme created by Trump allies and boosted by Trump himself to cast fake electoral votes for the Republican candidate for the 2020 election.As part of the US electoral college system, states cast a set number of votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their state, the winner of which then takes the presidency. Seven states that the former president lost saw slates of fake GOP electors falsely claim Trump had won their electoral votes. These fake electors included high-profile Republicans, such as sitting officeholders and state party leaders.Two prosecutors, in Michigan and Georgia, have already filed charges against fake electors. Others have confirmed investigations but provided few details. One state prosecutor said local laws did not address this kind of crime, which is unprecedented.Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump campaign legal adviser and the supposed mastermind of the fake electors scheme, pleaded guilty in Georgia over his role in subverting the election. Chesebro allegedly created the plan in a secret memo based on Wisconsin’s electoral vote.At the federal level, the special counsel Jack Smith and his team brought charges against Trump and his allies over their attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, which include the fake elector scheme. Several states have confirmed they are cooperating with Smith’s investigation, and news reports have indicated Smith offered limited immunity to some fake electors for their testimony.Since the scheme had no precedent, some states and experts have struggled to figure out which laws may have been broken, and whether the charges should be state or federal. In some states, the fake electors also face civil lawsuits. Here’s where they stand.ArizonaThe former Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich, a Republican, never publicly confirmed any investigation into the state’s fake electors, which included high-profile far-right figures such as the state senator Jake Hoffman and the former Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward. The state actually saw two separate sets of fake electors.His successor, the Democrat Kris Mayes, told the Guardian earlier this year that her office is investigating the fake electors, but has not provided any details of the investigation so far. On a recent Arizona Republic podcast episode, Mayes said she could not say much about the contours of the investigation, but that her office was taking it “very seriously” and that it was a “very important investigation”.While the cases in Michigan and Georgia are much further along, she noted that their prosecutors have been in place much longer than she has. Mayes took office in January 2023.GeorgiaThree fake electors in Georgia were charged as part of a broader case against Trump and his allies over election subversion attempts.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, brought charges against the former Georgia Republican party chairman David Shafer, the state senator Shawn Still and the activist Cathy Latham, three of the 16 fake electors from that state. They face various charges, including forgery, impersonating a public officer and attempting to file false documents.Several of the others who signed on as false electors for Trump struck immunity deals or plea agreements with prosecutors.The three fake electors charged have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys argued in September that they were not fake electors, but instead “contingent” electors who could be used should the courts overturn Biden’s win, the Associated Press reported. The three are trying to get their case moved from state court in Georgia to a federal court, arguing they were acting as federal officers who were keeping an avenue open for Trump depending on what happened in the courts.Sidney Powell, who was charged in the broader case, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. The unexpected move netted Powell six years of probation and some fines and marks a major shift in the Georgia case for Trump and his allies. Chesebro, on the day jury selection for his trial was set to begin, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents and probably will serve five years’ probation.MichiganThe Democratic attorney general Dana Nessel charged 16 Michiganders who participated as fake electors with eight felonies each, including multiple forgery charges, for their roles in the scheme. Those charged include party activists, candidates for office and state and local party officials.Attempts by two defendants to get the charges dismissed because of Nessel’s comments about how the electors were “brainwashed” were unsuccessful. The 16 people charged pleaded not guilty, and probable cause hearings are set for this month.This week, one of Michigan’s fake electors saw his charges dropped as part of a deal with the state’s attorney general. James Renner, a Republican who falsely signed that Trump had won, agreed to “full cooperation, truthful testimony and production of any and all relevant documents” in exchange for the dropped charges, filings from the attorney general’s office, obtained by NBC News, show. This includes information about how he was asked to become part of the fake slate and the circumstances of meetings among those involved in the scheme.NevadaNevada’s top prosecutor has said his office would not bring charges against the six people who signed on as fake electors there in 2020. The state’s Democratic attorney general, Aaron Ford, said current state laws did not address this kind of situation, “to the dismay of some, and I’m sure, to the delight of others”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Democratic state senator Skip Daly attempted to solve that problem, and the state legislature passed a bill that would have made it a felony for people to serve as false electors, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Ford had endorsed the bill.But the Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, vetoed the bill, saying the penalties were too harsh, though he said he believed those who undermine elections should face “strict punishments”.New MexicoThe former New Mexico attorney general Hector Balderas started an investigation into the five Republicans who signed as false electors there, then referred the matter to federal prosecutors, according to Source New Mexico.The office of the current attorney general, Raúl Torrez, confirmed there was an active state investigation into the fake electors to see if they violated state law, but details about the case have been scant. Torrez’s office said it would work with Jack Smith to get any evidence related to a state inquiry, according to KOAT Action News.Like Pennsylvania, the fake electors in New Mexico included a caveat in their documents that could help them, should charges be filed. They wrote that they signed the documents “on the understanding that it might be later determined that we are the duly elected and qualified electors”.PennsylvaniaThe 20 fake electors in Pennsylvania are unlikely to face any criminal charges because of how they worded the documents they signed. The documents say the false electoral votes would only be considered valid if the courts deemed the slate to be the “duly elected and qualified electors” for Pennsylvania.Governor Josh Shapiro, then the state’s Democratic attorney general, said the hedged language would spare the false electors from a criminal investigation by his office. His successor as attorney general, Michelle Henry, told Votebeat that the office’s position remained that charges were not warranted.“Though their rhetoric and policy were intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy, based on our initial review, our office does not believe this meets the legal standards for forgery,” Shapiro said in 2022.WisconsinThe Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, has not said whether his office is investigating the state’s 10 fake electors for potential state law violations, though a civil lawsuit against the alternate slate is moving forward. Kaul has said he supports the federal investigation and that he expects to see “further developments” in that case.Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, said in August he wanted to see the Wisconsin fake electors “held accountable” via prosecution.“What those ten fake electors did was wrong,” Evers wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “People have to be held accountable for that, and I hope to hell somebody does.”Federal prosecutors, in the Trump indictment, said the fake electors scheme started in Wisconsin with the attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who suggested electors meet there to sign on to a slate in case Trump’s team won in the courts. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Pro-Trump lawyer accepts plea deal in Georgia ‘fake electors’ case

      by

      Kenneth Chesebro, the attorney who allegedly devised the “fake electors” plan to prevent Joe Biden from winning the 2020 election, has accepted a plea deal and will avoid going to trial in the Fulton county racketeering case involving Donald Trump and 17 others.The last-minute plea deal marks the second major victory in as many days for prosecutors, who can now compel him to testify against his former allies in Trump’s inner circle to bolster their case.Chesebro appeared in court on Friday and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit filing false documents. His plea agreement is for five years of probation, $5,000 in restitution, 100 hours of community service and an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia. Most importantly, it requires that he turn over any evidence in his possession and truthfully testify at all hearings and trials involving the case’s co-defendants, including Trump.Attorney Sidney Powell, who was also set to stand trial beginning on Friday, accepted a plea deal on Thursday, potentially pressuring Chesebro into doing the same. ABC reported that two days ago he had rejected a plea offer from prosecutors to avoid jail time by pleading guilty to the conspiracy charge.Fifteen additional co-defendants, including Trump, are set to stand trial next year as a part of the racketeering case brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis. Both Powell and Chesebro’s cases had been severed from the larger racketeering case because they filed demands for a speedy trial.Chesebro played two key roles in Trump’s post-election efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He wrote a pair of early December memos laying out a strategy for fake pro-Trump electors to meet in the six states where Trump lost to preserve a path forward to challenge the election in court and potentially on 6 January in Congress, and he laid out the legal argument that the vice-president could reject states’ electors during the election certification – while suggesting that Vice-President Mike Pence should recuse himself to avoid a conflict of interest.His decision to flip on Trump and his allies is potentially the most damaging for the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and the Trump attorney John Eastman, with whom he worked closely to devise the legal plot to challenge the election.Chesebro had faced seven felony counts, including a conspiracy count and six additional charges related to a plan to create “alternate electors” to falsely certify that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election. His plea deal came shortly after jury selection for his trial had begun on Friday.Attorneys for Chesebro and representatives for the Fulton county district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe decisions by Chesebro and Powell to take plea agreements could significantly strengthen Willis’s case against Trump, since both attorneys played key roles in the former president’s attempts to cling to office. Both have significant knowledge of the inner workings of the plot, and could offer new information at trial. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Trump’s ex-lawyer Sidney Powell pleads guilty in Georgia election case

      by

      Former lawyer for then-president Donald Trump Sidney Powell has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case in Fulton county, just days before jury selection for her trial was scheduled to start.The plea agreement has Powell paying a $6,000 fine and $2,700 restitution to the state of Georgia as well as writing an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia, testifying at trial, and serving six years of probation.More details soon … More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Sidney Powell Pleads Guilty in Georgia Trump Case

      by

      Ms. Powell, a lawyer who pushed baseless theories about ballot fraud in 2020, is the second defendant to accept a plea deal in the election interference case. Sidney Powell, the Trump-aligned lawyer and conspiracy theorist indicted in Georgia and accused of participating in a plot to overturn former President Donald J. Trump’s election loss in 2020, pleaded guilty on Thursday morning to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference of election duties.Ms. Powell, who appeared in a downtown Atlanta courtroom, was sentenced to six years of probation for the charges, a significantly less-severe outcome than she would have faced if found guilty of the charges for which she was originally indicted, which included a violation of the state racketeering law.She was also fined $6,000 and agreed to pay $2,700 restitution to the State of Georgia, as well as write an apology letter “to the citizens of the state of Georgia.” More