Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 8
One aspect of Sidney Powell' plea deal reached in the Georgia case generating questions is the existance of any deal she may have also cut with Jack Smith who is prosecuting the federal case on election fraud.
If a defendant faces both state and federal charges regarding the same general acts, anything they say in one case can be used in the other -- it's not double jeopardy. In Powell's case, she had an actual indictment against her for state criminal charges. She was also REFERENCED as a co-conspirator (#3) in the federal indictment but wasn't NAMED in that indictment. That doesn't mean the DOJ cannot come back at a later point and charge her along with the other unindicted co-defendents.
Powell's plea deal requires her to testify truthfully on all matters in any upcoming court appearance. That statement is not qualified and restricted to only the Georgia racketeering case or restricted only to Georgia state court appearances. It says ANY matter in ANY court appearance. Failure to tell the full truth could result in her plea deal being tossed and criminal charges re-instated and tried.
When a defendant files a guilty plea involving a deal with the prosecution, the judge in the case forces the defendant to answer a series of simple, explicit questions:
1) are you on any medications that could alter your ability to understand information / communication?
2) do you the defendant believe the facts in evidence are sufficient proof of your guilt?
3) do the documents submitted here for this deal reflect the complete understanding between you and the prosecutor?
4) are there any other agreements you have made that have any impact on your decision to file this plea?
The goal of these questions is to avoid later appeals that the defendant didn't understand the charges, didn't understand the evidence, didn't in fact mean to say they are guilty of the accused crime(s) and fully understands the impact of their plea.
That last question is the key point of interest with Powell. In her answers today agreeing to her plea deal, she told the judge there are NO OTHER AGREEMENTS in place that she has made with any party that affected her interest in agreeing to this plea deal.
With most cases, a defense attorney working for a client straddling state AND federal charges for the same set of acts / facts would normally want to have a deal in place with prosecutors at both levels, otherwise anything said (in this case) in state court admitting their guilt could be used against them in federal court. In theory, if she and her attorney answered the #4 question above truthfully today, she has no deal in place with Jack Smith. In theory, that means she is now exposed to nearly unlimited legal peril at the federal level. Maybe not immediately -- Jack Smith left those parties un-indicted for a reason, likely because he didn't want the primary case to get too unweildy with too many defendants. But Smith can come back later at any time within the statute of limitations and go after those other uninicted co-conspirators.
From the filing of this indictment, it has not been clear whether Powell and Chesebro had decided on their speedy trial strategy because they thought they could bum-rush a prosecutor who in fact wasn't ready for a trial OR if they recognized how weak their case was and could not afford a 6-12 month wait with lawyers burning up dollars they cannot afford.
From today's news, the quality of Powell's counsel seems doubtful. While she did avoid prison time in what should have been a pretty simple case, it isn't clear yet what the full price she paid might have been. She may not know until Jack Smith is done with the entire case.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 2
In theory, that means she is now exposed to nearly unlimited legal peril at the federal level.
I mean - maybe? She didn't plead to a state Rico charge. She only pled to counts of interfering with local, Georgia election rules. Specifically, the counts she pled to were to interfering with the operations of one of their local election precincts - trying to access computers, trying to access voter data, trying to remove Dominion software from one of the machines, etc. None of those are really predicates to the conspiracy that Jack Smith is charging, which relate to the "paperwork coup" of getting the Congress to ignore the actual electors that resulted from the 2020 election. The facts that she's admitting to in the Georgia case ("We tried to illegally access the Georgia voting machines") aren't especially pertinent to the crimes charged in the federal case.
So I think her counsel probably did an excellent job. That's a great plea deal - no jail time at all and a miniscule fine. And since we know that the federal and state prosecutors are coordinating on all of this, I actually think this is a good sign for Powell that she's not in Smith's sights for future prosecution. Otherwise there would have been a little more effort on the part of federal prosecutors to get the state to make her deal contingent on a similar deal in the federal case. This good a deal means that either the feds don't care about her, or that the information she's giving up (not testimony) is so useful that it's worth it for the feds to lose this leverage over her.
No. of Recommendations: 5
That makes sense but...
Powell attended meetings in the White House and spent at least some time with Trump without White House counsel in the room (possibly by herself or just with co-crazies). She may have additional facts that support other aspects of the case. I presume those discussions are of interest to Smith. I think the local election tampering efforts (actual tampering or mere allegations someone else did the tampering) ARE crucial to the core "slate of electors" fraud because these election machine allegations were essential to creating a climate of doubt about local election integrity that the "core coup team" could use to justify their request to adopt the alternate slate of electors.
Of course, I still don't understand the logic in any plea deal here. People have fought and died so that we can have elections -- fair elections. Anyone involved with wholesale election fraud needs to serve jail time. Anything less sends a horrible message -- fines and probation are just the cost of doing business.
The case seems air tight and if this witness IS the only source of a particular fact based on a conversation where she is the only witness, I can't see a jury trusting her testimony. She is a proven liar and her crimes all involve lying in her professional role. As you state, maybe Smith has decided her testimony has little worth to him because of her reputation. Even that would be a horrible precedent. Want to overturn an election and minimize your downside? Just involve a bunch of certified lunatics as co-conspirators so none will be trusted later on the stand.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 3
Of course, I still don't understand the logic in any plea deal here. People have fought and died so that we can have elections -- fair elections. Anyone involved with wholesale election fraud needs to serve jail time. Anything less sends a horrible message -- fines and probation are just the cost of doing business.
I think the idea is that Powell wasn't actually charged with wholesale election fraud in Georgia. Her wrongful actions were in illegally trying to get access to the voting machines and records.
She's a terrible person because she spread lies about the integrity of voting machines (and Dominion) all across the country - lying about what happened, lying about what evidence she had to back up her claims, lying about what elections officials did, etc. She deserves to lose all her money to Dominion, and to be disbarred for perpetrating that fraud. And those lies became a part of the "paperwork coup," which was very very dangerous to democracy. But her actual crimes in Georgia were far more prosaic - she wasn't on the Raffensperger call and she doesn't appear to have been an architect of, or even an active participant in, trying to get Congress and/or state legislators to do anything. And sometimes you can't get the bigger fish without letting the little fish go.
Her testimony on the stand is probably useless - but her plea deal might make it easier to get one of the other "little fish," someone who could be valuable on the stand, to flip. There's 17 defendants left to go. We'll see if any other dominoes fall.
