Emptywheel -1 --- complete post
Sidney Powell is pleading guilty to six counts of conspiring to interfere with election administration in Fulton County. These will be misdemeanors treated under the First Offender Act. She will be sentenced to six years of probation.
She is required to testify against any and all co-defendants in the case.
Emptywheel -2 --- partial quote
I laid out why she might flip back when the Georgia indictment came out.
One way the Georgia and federal indictments will interact is in the relative pressure between already being charged, in a state with strict pardon rules, and being not-yet charged, in a venue where Trump has pardoned his way out of criminal trouble in the past.
Five people are named as co-conspirators in both: Rudy (CC1 in the federal indictment), John Eastman (CC2), Powell (CC3), Jeffrey Clark (CC4) and Ken Chesebro (CC5).
Some of these people, like Sidney Powell, Trump might not consider pardoning in any case. Plus, Trump’s closest associates have spent the last week or so throwing her under the bus. But thus far at least, Powell’s personal legal risk is far greater in Georgia than federally.
Others, though, may think seriously about how much harder it would be to get a pardon for Georgia than a Federal indictment, where the next Republican President, possibly including Donald Trump, would be able to pardon them.
For Powell, more than anyone else, flipping was a wise option. She’s one of the five people charged in Georgia also described as co-conspirators in Jack Smith’s indictment (Boris Epshteyn is believed to be co-conspirator#6 in DC, but is being subpoenaed as a witness in Georgia).
All five are likely aware that loyalty in DC, which might win them a pardon if Trump wins in 2024, won’t save them in Georgia, where pardons are much harder to come by.
After Judge Scott McAfee rejected a Powell bid to dismiss the non-RICO charges against her, the decision to flip likely became a lot easier. The hacking charges with which she was charged were the most serious free-standing charges in the Georgia indictment.
Irrespective of what happens in DC, Powell traded cooperation and six years of probation — with the possibility of having the charges expunged — to avoid the possibility of serious state prison time that Trump couldn’t pardon away.
In any case, Powell is not among the insiders Trump would be quickest to pardon.
One thing about the decision: in spite of all the TV lawyers claiming she’ll make a terrible witness because she’s so batshit, this was an eminently rational decision. She sounded absolutely sane in yesterday’s plea hearing, as I imagine she did when he [sic she?] provided her videotaped testimony before pleading.
What can she deliver? Enough to be offered a deal. Beyond that the Georgia trial will have her as a witness where we find out what she is asked and how she replies.
As Marcy Wheeler indicates in the second linked Emptywheel item, where Powell is at in the separate federal litigation, whether a plea has been negotiated or is being considered, remains unknown.
________UPDATE_______
Lawyer Chesbro joins Lawyer Powell, in flipping. Cehsbro is the one dealing in alternative electors. Read of it at EmptyWheel.