CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Thursday on CNN’s “News Central” that Attorney Sidney Powell’s guilty plea in the Georgia election crimes case could be potentially “devastating for Donald Trump.”
Partial transcript as follows:
KATE BOLDUAN: Few people pushed it further than Sidney Powell.
HONIG: Yeah, that’s right. It’s important to remember who Sidney Powell is, she’s one of Donald Trump’s closest loyalists. She’s somebody who Donald Trump has claimed he relied on her advice to proceed in his effort to try to steal this election.
This is a major breakthrough for prosecutors, potentially a devastating development for Donald Trump, because what’s going to happen now is Sidney Powell is going to testify for prosecutors in Georgia, and presumably she’ll also be prepared to testify for Jack Smith in his federal case in Washington, D.C. She’s not indicted in that case, but she’s listed as a coconspirator in that case. She’s going to be able to provide insider information that could be really devastating towards Donald Trump.
JOHN BERMAN: She was in the room where some things, if not happened, were at least discussed. She was part of some of these contentious meetings that allegedly took place in the White House before January 6. How can prosecutors now use her?
HONIG: So you use her to bring your jury into that very room. She will be the guide. She will be the narrator. She will be able to say, I was in this room with Donald Trump, with Rudy Giuliani. Here’s what we discussed. Here’s who said what. Here’s what we knew.
And John, really importantly, in order to take this plea in this deal, Sidney Powell is going to have to acknowledge what we did was criminal. It was illegal, it was a crime. And so that’s going to lend a lot of credibility, I think, obviously, to prosecutors assertions that what Donald Trump did was knowingly a crime, was an intentional crime.
So now they’ve sort of got an ultimate insider, somebody who has remained steadfastly loyal to Donald Trump, to the stolen election narrative. Now she has flipped. Now she has come clean. Now she’s going to be a prosecution witness.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
