this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Trump attorney Sidney Powell pleads guilty in Georgia election subversion case | CNN Politics (www.cnn.com)
submitted 11 months ago by memfree@beehaw.org to c/usnews@beehaw.org
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cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/politics/t/552682

Former Donald Trump attorney Sidney Powell has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election subversion case, one day before her trial was set to start.

Edit:

Former Donald Trump attorney Sidney Powell has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election subversion case, one day before her trial was set to start.

Fulton County prosecutors are recommending a sentence of six years probation. Powell will also be required to testify at future trials and write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia.

As part of her guilty plea, Powell is admitting her role in the January 2021 breach of election systems in rural Coffee County, Georgia. With the help of local GOP officials, a group of Trump supporters accessed and copied information from the county’s election systems in hopes of somehow proving that the election was rigged against Trump.

Her attorneys had vehemently rejected prosecutors’ claims that she orchestrated the Coffee County breach. They’ve said at pretrial hearings that prosecutors are “incorrect” and that “the evidence will show that she was not the driving force behind” the incident.

Powell is now the second person in the sprawling racketeering case to plead guilty. Bail bondsman Scott Hall last month pleaded guilty and agreed to testify at future trials. The other 17 defendants, including Trump, have pleaded not guilty.

Pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro’s trial is slated to begin Friday with jury selection.

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[–] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Supposedly this is part of how racketeering cases go. Those defendants who flip early get the best deals, basically little more than a slap on the wrist. The next ones get good deals but not quite as lenient, and so on. Because they're not even the real target. The real win here is the "testify in future trials" part.

What the prosecution actually wants is to snowball a critical mass of the conspirators to all plead guilty and point their fingers at the holdouts, especially the kingpin. That's how you collapse the whole racket.

If you don't make them turn on one another then the criminal conspiracy club can hold together and protect each other with plausible and consistent lies. But when some of them start squawking "yep we did it all and here's how", the other crooks' alibis start looking a whole lot less believable.

[–] NovaPrime@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh I get the mechanics of it (attorney myself) but it still exposes a two-tier justice system where those with power and influence get overall better deals for much worse crimes than the poor and those deemed "useless" for future prosecutions. The system doesn't care about justice but rather prosecutorial efficiency and conviction rates.

[–] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

Ah apologies then, your awareness is well beyond what I realized when posting.

And yeah that situation is definitely unfair in the larger picture. I have no law experience and no idea how to make it better. Happy to read from experts though.