Sidney Powell isn’t off the hook yet
When Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty in Fulton County this week and agreed to fully cooperate, they received rather lenient deals in return. They’ll each merely have to slog through several years of probation, with no prison time, as long as they live up to their end of the bargain. But they’re not off the hook yet, because this is only the half of it.
Now that Powell and Chesebro have cut cooperation deals in Fulton County, they pretty much have to go and cut cooperation deals with Jack Smith. Otherwise Smith could just take the testimony they give against themselves in Fulton County, and use it to prosecute them at the federal level. So Powell and Chesebro will be cutting deals with Smith soon. And they’ll be going into it with no leverage, because Smith knows they have to flip now.
To that end, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner says that he suspects that if Powell and Chesebro want lenient deals from Jack Smith, they’ll have to give up a lot more than what they’re already giving up in Fulton County. Kirschner even thinks Powell could still end up going to federal prison at the hands of Smith.
This dovetails with what I wrote the other day about Chesebro. His role in the Fulton County criminal plot was more narrow. But he was also seen following Alex Jones around the Capitol grounds on January 6th. That’s outside the purview of Fulton County, but it’s right in the wheelhouse of Jack Smith. If Chesebro wants a lenient deal from Smith, he’ll certainly have to give up Jones and others involved with the Capitol attack.
In other words, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro still have some major decisions to make – and thanks to the choice they just made, they’re very limited in their options going forward. They each have to cut a deal with Jack Smith. And they’ll have to give up everything they know about everyone involved with January 6th in order to get a lenient deal, or they’ll have to decide that they’re willing to go to federal prison if there are things they want to keep to themselves about January 6th.
Powell and Chesebro are making a smart move by flipping instead of going to trial in Fulton County. But the far smarter move would have been to flip months ago, and negotiate deals with Fani Willis and Jack Smith simultaneously, back when Powell and Chesebro would have had more leverage. At this point their only choice is to fall in line. Of course their smartest move would have been to never get involved with Donald Trump to begin with. Funny how many people end up having that lament.
