On Thursday, Powell struck a last-minute plea agreement with Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis, agreeing to plead guilty to six misdemeanor counts under Georgia’s First Time Offender law. Under this law, Powell will serve six years of probation, after which the criminal charges will be discharged, leaving Powell with no criminal record. As part of the plea deal, Powell must also testify truthfully in the upcoming criminal trials of the other defendants. The former Trump adviser must also pen an apology letter to Georgia citizens and pay nearly $10,000 in fines and restitution.
Powell’s deal resembles, in some ways, the sweetheart “pretrial diversion” agreement Hunter Biden negotiated with the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, which later fell apart. But there is one huge difference between the two agreements: Powell only agreed to plead guilty because Willis had obtained a grand jury indictment charging her with seven serious felony counts. And in her plea agreement, Powell did not plead guilty to any of the charges contained in the indictment.
The bottom line is this: Willis basically extorted a guilty plea from Powell by charging her with seven serious felonies, including a RICO conspiracy count, two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud, and one count each of conspiracy to commit computer theft, conspiracy to commit computer trespass, conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy, and conspiracy to defraud the state. With a jury culled from deep-blue Fulton County, the risk of a conviction on even one of the felony counts, and the consequential loss of her law license, would be just too great of a chance for any defendant to take — especially when the plea only involved misdemeanors that would be discharged from Powell’s record following probation. Under these circumstances, it would have been lunacy for Powell to have rejected the plea offer.
But what reason would Willis have to offer such a favorable deal? None, if Willis truly believed Powell committed the felonies for which she was charged and Willis had the evidence to prove them. After all, it is not as if Powell’s testimony is needed to establish the other crimes charged against the other defendants.
So why let Powell off with what would be a slap on the wrist if Powell had committed the felonies as charged? The answer seems clear: Powell hadn’t committed the felonies, and Willis never thought she had. But she overcharged Powell to add gravitas to the supposed election conspiracy claims and to make an offer for a first-offender misdemeanor plea deal an offer too good to refuse.
R&I – TP
DGM
Article URL : https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/20/sidney-powells-plea-proves-fulton-county-prosecutor-went-nuclear-to-get-trump/