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When Donald Trump was indicted in Fulton County, it was a dramatic development, but the former president wasn’t the only one charged in Georgia’s election interference case. On the contrary, the Republican was one of 19 co-defendants.
Nearly all of those charged have pleaded not guilty. There are, however, a couple of notable exceptions.
The first came about a month ago, when a local bail bondsman named Scott Fall pleaded guilty. As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, he was indicted “in connection with the breach of sensitive voting data in Coffee County in south Georgia. He had been charged with racketeering and six counts of conspiracy.” Under the terms of the deal, Hall was sentenced to five years’ probation and agreed to ‘testify truthfully in this case and all further proceedings.’”
The second exception came a few hours ago, and it’s fair to say this defendant has a higher public profile. NBC News reported:
Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty Thursday morning in the Georgia election interference case just a day before jury selection in her trial alongside co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro was set to begin. Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit election interference in Fulton County Superior Court as part of a deal reached with prosecutors.
As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, Powell has agreed to serve six years of probation, pay a $6,000 fine, pay $2,700 in restitution to the state of Georgia, and submit an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia.
Perhaps most importantly, Powell also agreed to testify at related court proceedings.
In case anyone needs a refresher, Powell was not a particularly well-known lawyer, at least in the political world, until 2020. Indeed, after Donald Trump’s election defeat, Powell — a proponent of a great many strange ideas — peddled a bizarre conspiracy theory about the 2020 results, implicating George Soros, “communist money,” the Clinton Foundation, Venezuela, antifa, Cuba, possibly China, and Hugo Chavez, who’d been dead for several years.
A month later, Trump thought it’d be a good idea to make Powell a special counsel, responsible for pursuing ridiculous anti-election ideas with considerable federal power.
That, of course, didn’t happen, but Powell nevertheless worked directly for Trump before he left office, and she was a member of his post-election inner circle.
That was nearly three years ago. Now, this same attorney has pleaded guilty to crimes related to the 2020 election.
As best as I can tell, the former president hasn’t yet responded to the latest developments, though let’s not forget that the last time Powell got into trouble, Trump pretended to barely know her:
“No, she was, she didn’t work for me. She was a lawyer that was representing General [Mike] Flynn and some others, and she never officially — now she was on our side from the standpoint, I guess, you know, from the standpoint of what she was doing, but she didn’t work for me as per se. She worked for General Flynn and others. And I disagree with some of the things that she’s doing, and some of the statements that she made, as you know.”
None of this was true, but given the former president’s pattern, no one should be surprised if he tries a similar approach now.