Sidney Powell pleads guilty to election interference, releasing the Kraken on Donald Trump
As usual, it’s a great day to not be former president and current criminal defendant Donald J. Trump.
Sidney Powell – his former legal adviser, fellow champion of the gargantuan and ongoing “rigged election” lie and co-defendant in the sweeping Georgia election interference case – pleaded guilty Thursday and agreed to testify against others involved in the alleged conspiracy.
The word “others” is important, as it may well include Trump, the far-and-away leading GOP presidential primary candidate who, one imagines, is presently hurling all available ketchup at the walls of his Mar-a-Lago pout room.
Sidney Powell promised to 'release the Kraken.' So much for that.
Powell was known among Trump fanatics and election conspiracy theorists as the person who would “release the Kraken” and unleash unassailable evidence the election was rigged, righteously returning Trump to the White House. In a Nov. 24, 2020, Fox Business interview with Lou Dobbs, Powell said of the election, "There's no way there was anything but widespread election fraud here."
She has now pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference of election duties and been sentenced to six years of probation.
She also has to pay some fines and write an apology letter to the people of Georgia, which is quite the thing when you consider the unbridled conviction with which she lied to the American public, often via Fox News appearances, about the 2020 presidential election being “stolen” from Trump.
Trump's Georgia arrest isn't an anomaly: Take a good look at Trump's booking photo, Republicans. That's your GOP.
Powell's unhinged conspiracies were featured prominently in Dominion Voting Systems successful lawsuit against Fox News, and she's facing her own $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from the company as well.
It appears the Kraken may not be all she was cracked up to be. Worse yet for the MAGA crowd, said Kraken will now be released in Trump’s direction.
Powell was an integral part of Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election
Duly flipped, Powell will undoubtedly help Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ case against other defendants like former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and the former president himself, as she was central to much of the hysterical lying and scheming that transpired after Joe Biden won the presidency fair and square.
In a Nov. 14, 2020, tweet, Trump hailed Powell as part of his “truly great team” of lawyers.
Powell was part of an election conspiracy news conference held at the Republican National Committee headquarters on Nov. 19, 2020, an event made famous largely because Giuliani was sweating so profusely that hair dye ran down the side of his face.
At the news conference, Powell said: “What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China and the interference with our elections here in the United States.”
Trump will have a hard time distancing himself from Powell
People with even a pinky toe still dipped in the pool of reality knew at the time that was nonsense, but it's clear from her guilty plea that Powell knew it was nonsense as well.
She went to meet with Trump at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020, and talked about declaring a national emergency and having the president order the military to seize certain voting machines.
How long until Trump breaks gag order? Trump, who never shuts up, now has a gag order to whine about. And you know he will.
It’s easy to write Powell off as a conspiratorial crackpot, but they were all conspiratorial crackpots, and she marched side by side with Giuliani and Trump.
Powell pleading guilty makes Trump's 'election interference' claims even more ridiculous
So the Kraken pleading guilty does three significant things:
It blows a Kraken-size hole in the MAGA allegations that the district attorney’s racketeering case in Georgia is a meritless political witch hunt.
It makes Trump’s repeated claims that the multitude of charges he’s facing – in Georgia and in three other cases – are “election interference.” Hard to argue you’re a victim of election interference when your co-defendant pleads guilty to that very thing.
It puts pressure on Giuliani and another higher-up co-defendant, Kenneth Chesebro, to take a plea deal and flip on Trump.
At long last, Sidney Powell said something true
For all her zany nonsense – which was featured over and over on Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election, helping brainwash a sizable swath of the populace – Powell was sane enough to know when to save her own hide.
Asked by the judge Thursday whether she believes “there are enough facts that support this plea of guilty,” Powell responded: “I do.”
That’s one of the first honest things she has said in a long time. And it pulls the curtain all the way back on the scam Trump and his cronies have been running since the day he lost the 2020 election.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sidney Powell's guilty plea shows Trump is in big trouble in Georgia
