Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Sidney Powell, pleaded guilty this Thursday, October 19, to six counts of conspiracy to interfere in the election results and try to reverse the former president’s defeat in the state of Georgia, United States. In addition, she agreed to testify against Trump, who is following his race to win the Republican nomination for the 2024 elections.
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Former President of the United States, Donald Trump, faces an increasingly complex judicial scenario. Although he has denied his implications, a key confession was revealed this Thursday, October 19, that puts the former president on the ropes.
His former lawyer, Sidney Powell, pleaded guilty to aiding the former president’s efforts to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden in the state of Georgia. Not only that. She also agreed to testify against him if the prosecutor in charge asks her to do so.
Powell is one of 18 charged in the alleged criminal conspiracy case being investigated in Fulton County, Georgia. The lawyer pleaded guilty to six charges, including extortion and conspiracy to commit electoral fraud.
He admitted, for example, his role in the raid of Coffee County’s election systems. However, Powell’s defense clarified that she was not the one who “orchestrated” the plan for a group of the former president’s supporters to illegally access said systems and try to prove accusations of alleged fraud or manipulation of the results.
The case against Trump gains strength
Powell’s statement is described as a victory by Fulton prosecutor Fani Willis, whose team obtained the former attorney’s cooperation. In exchange, they asked for six years of provisional release, that he testify in future trials about the case and issue a public apology to the residents of Georgia.
In the indictment, the prosecutor noted that Powell represented the former president after the 2020 elections and would have helped spread false claims of alleged manipulation of the results.
Powell is the second defendant, of 19 in total, to plead guilty. The first was Scott Graham Hall, a Trump bail bondsman, who pleaded guilty to five charges, all misdemeanors, in the election interference case. The prosecutor accused him of charges similar to the Powells for his role in violating the electoral system.
In September, it was learned that the prosecutor’s office planned to offer cooperation agreements, not only for Powell and Hall, but also for Kenneth Chesebro, another of the defendants in this case. But he rejected his agreement to plead guilty.
Donald Trump: a judicial and electoral career
The former president faces state and federal charges. The first accusation came in March 2023 and since then several cases have been added. Two of them, for manipulating the results of the 2020 elections and trying to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. A third for having illegally kept classified national security documents, after leaving office in January 2021. The fourth, for alleged falsification of business records.
Of all of them, Trump has declared himself innocent and has described it as a political persecution or “witch hunt” through the judicial system.
None of the cases have come to trial and they continue in tandem with an electoral race, in which Donald Trump seeks the presidency for the second time.
Despite all the accusations, criminal and civil, his popularity remains and he remains the best placed to be the representative of the Republicans in the 2024 presidential elections. The former president has not been affected by his judicial situation. However, he will face an electoral campaign, while several of the trials against him begin in January of next year.
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