Sidney Powell Didn't Flip on Trump or MAGA
It is alarming (although not surprising) to see the misinformation in headlines, new articles, and on social media about Sidney Powell’s plea in Georgia last week. Even good Republicans and MAGA supporters seem confused and misinformed about the facts of her plea, many believing she has disavowed her position on the 2020 election and betrayed her supporters or that she has “flipped” on Trump.
First, let’s be very clear that Sidney did not plead guilty to a conspiracy with Donald Trump to unlawfully overturn the 2020 election. The RICO charge was dropped as part of Sidney’s plea. To repeat for absolute clarity, Sidney did not plead guilty to a charge that she unlawfully tried to overturn the 2020 election or otherwise “admit” that the claims the 2020 election were stolen were unsubstantiated.
Instead, she pled to six misdemeanors. In this excellent Substack post by TechnoFog, TechnoFog wrote the following about the misdemeanors:
[Sidney’s] plea deal is narrow and only relates to conduct that occurred in Coffee County, Georgia, where contractors accessed voting machines with the permission of local officials. Let us add a few words about those charges: Coffee County officials gave a written invitation for contractors from technical group SullivanStrickler to access their voting machines. Powell didn’t authorize those actions; she approved payment to SullivanStrickler after the fact. Of course, Fulton County maintains that local officials had no authority to grant access to voting machines, therefore making all of their actions illegal. (Authority would have been an issue at Powell’s trial.) In any event, Fulton County has no evidence that Powell or anyone from SullivanStrickler knew that Coffee County officials didn’t have this authority.
Claims she flipped on Donald Trump are outlandish and without basis. We say that someone has flipped when a defendant agrees to testify/incriminate someone else in exchange for a lighter charge or suggested lighter sentence. But Sidney’s plea agreement is for conduct unrelated to Donald Trump and only tenuously related to even Sidney herself. Simply put: Sidney agreed to take the rap for the disputed access to Fulton County machines.
Second, keep in mind that Sidney’s plea is different from the other pleas. The media has been reporting on each plea as if each co-defendant is caving and pleading to the same serious charges—admitting the fight for election integrity was a fraud and there was a conspiracy with Trump. This is not true.
Although I have not studied Kenneth Chesebro’s plea, it was to a single felony count for conspiracy to file false documents. CNN falsely reported:
Kenneth Chesebro…pleaded guilty Friday in the Georgia election subversion case to being part of a conspiracy alongside former President Donald Trump and others.
That suggests that Chesebro pled to the primary RICO charge, which is not true.
Jenna Ellis today also pled guilty to a felony count, admitting she made false statements to Georgia legislators about election fraud. She gave a tearful statement in which she suggested she had been misled by “lawyers with many more years of experience.” She also said that if she “knew then what [she] know[s] now, [she] would have declined to represent Donald Trump.” I have no idea what Jenna will testify in the future, but it is clear that her felony count is unrelated to the misdemeanors to which Sidney pled, and her statements cannot be attributed to Sidney.
Sidney’s plea was the lightest of these three, and her plea did not require her to disavow her position that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and the American majority.
President Trump obviously understands this, since he posted a very supportive message to his Truth Social account yesterday:
To summarize, Sidney pled to light misdemeanors that do not undermine her position on election integrity or betray the many Americans who love and support her; the underlying facts of the plea are unrelated to Donald Trump; and it is a gross mischaracterization to claim she flipped on him. She is a wrongly prosecuted patriot who chose not to continue on in a criminal case that was stacked against her. As I stated the day she pled:
Please share this information with your friends and family who are confused about Sidney’s status. You can follow her work and continue to support her at her Substack
.N.B. I worked with Sidney Powell on the defense of General Michael Flynn in 2019/2020. I no longer work for Sidney, but I remain close to her personally. These statements are mine alone.