Slate: “On Thursday, Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to misdemeanor election interference charges in Fulton County, Georgia, becoming the highest-level figure to admit guilt in the vast conspiracy to try to overturn the 2020 election.
To put it more colloquially, Powell flipped. This is awful news for Donald Trump, as Powell also immediately becomes the highest-level known cooperating witness against him. Given what we know about Powell’s role in the days surrounding Jan. 6 and the very lenient terms of her plea deal, she appears poised to offer damning testimony against the former president….
That testimony against her co-defendants could start as soon as next month, when the trial of Chesebro is projected to begin. While Powell is not obligated by the agreement to testify against Trump as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution, scheduled for March, any testimony she gives in the Chesebro trial could potentially be used by Smith’s team. If Powell refuses to testify in the federal case, Judge Tanya Chutkan could decide to admit any Georgia testimony. “Her testimony will be on the record and potentially admissible,” in the federal case, said Eisen.
There are several reasons why Powell could prove to be such a critical witness against Trump. For one thing, the original RICO indictment alleged that she was deeply involved in a scheme to steal voting machine software in Coffee County.
What’s more important, for the purposes of the prosecutions against Trump, though, is that the House Jan. 6 committee revealed that she was an active participant during a critical White House meeting in the weeks before Jan. 6, during which Trump allegedly sought to have her appointed as special counsel in order to seize voting machines. Eisen called that the “the Oval Office meeting that has been described as one of the craziest of the Trump administration,” and said testimony on it is likely to be critical to the overall conspiracy charge.”