Sidney Powell pleads guilty over efforts to overturn Trump loss in Georgia

Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to reduced charges Thursday over efforts to overturn Donald Trumps loss in the 2020 election in Georgia becoming the second defendant in the sprawling case to reach a deal with prosecutors Powell who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the states antiracketeering law entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trialShe was initially charged with racketeering and six other counts as part of a wideranging scheme to keep the Republican president in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe BidenProsecutors say she also participated in an unauthorised breach of elections equipment in a rural Georgia county elections officeThe acceptance of a plea deal is a remarkable aboutface for a lawyer who perhaps more than anyone else strenuously pushed baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election in the face of extensive evidence to the contraryIf prosecutors compel her to testify she could provide insight on a news conference she participated in on behalf of Trump and his campaign shortly after the election and on a White House meeting she attended in midDecember of that year during which strategies and theories to influence the outcome of the election were discussedPowell was scheduled to go on trial on Monday with lawyer Kenneth Chesebro after each filed a demand for a speedy trialJury selection was set to start Friday The development means that Chesebro will go on trial by himself though prosecutors said earlier that they also planned to look into the possibility of offering him a plea dealA lowerprofile defendant in the case bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall last month pleaded guilty to five misdemeanour charges He was sentenced to five years of probation and agreed to testify in further proceedingsProsecutors allege that Powell conspired with Hall and others to access election equipment without authorisation 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 thereThe 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 campaignThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever