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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Lydia Chantler-Hicks

Former Trump lawyer pleads guilty in Georgia election subversion case day before start of trial

A former lawyer for Donald Trump has pleaded guilty to reduced charges over efforts to overturn the former president's loss in the 2020 election in Georgia.

Sidney Powell was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state's anti-racketeering law.

She had been due to go on trial next week but entered a plea on Thursday - just a day before jury selection was set to start - becoming the second defendant in the sprawling case to reach a deal with prosecutors.

She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors related to intentionally interfering with the performance of election duties.

As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 (£4,940) and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.

Powell, 68, was initially charged with racketeering and six other counts as part of a wide-ranging scheme to keep the Republican president in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Prosecutors say she also participated in an unauthorised breach of elections equipment in a rural Georgia county elections office.

Powell was scheduled to go on trial on Monday with lawyer Kenneth Chesebro. Jury selection was set to start Friday.

The development means that Chesebro will go on trial by himself, though prosecutors said earlier they also planned to look into the possibility of offering him a plea deal.

Barry Coburn, a Washington-based lawyer for Powell, declined to comment on Thursday.

A lower-profile defendant in the case, bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall, last month pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges. He was sentenced to five years of probation and agreed to testify in further proceedings.

Prosecutors allege that Powell conspired with Hall and others to access election equipment without authorization and hired computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to send a team to Coffee County, in south Georgia, to copy software and data from voting machines and computers there.

The indictment says a person who is not named sent an email to a top SullivanStrickler executive and instructed him to send all data copied from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Coffee County to an unidentified lawyer associated with Powell and the Trump campaign.

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