Sidney Powell, an attorney affiliated with former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election, recently told Fulton prosecutors that she would have sought the seizure of voting machines had she been appointed special counsel to root out claims of election fraud.
“I would have looked at putting into effect a provision of (a draft executive order) that would have allowed the machines to be secured in four or five states or cities and see about doing a bipartisan or military, or whatever everybody agreed on, review of the machines forensically,” Powell said.
The disclosure came during an interview, or proffer, that Powell recorded with the Fulton County District Attorney’s office last month after striking a plea deal. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained video of excerpted portions of the proffer totaling roughly one hour, which show Powell sitting in a nondescript conference room speaking with several prosecutors sitting off-camera, including special prosecutor Nathan Wade and assistant DA Daysha Young.
ABC News first reported details from the video, along with a similar interview conducted with attorney Jenna Ellis. The Washington Post later reported about the proffers held with Scott Hall and Kenneth Chesebro, the two other defendants who had reached plea deals with prosecutors.
On Tuesday, the DA’s office asked Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee for an emergency order protecting all discovery materials, including proffers, from being released.
Powell, Ellis, Hall and Chesebro each reached agreements with Fulton prosecutors in September and October, pleading guilty to lesser crimes in exchange for their cooperation in the case. They were among the 18 defendants indicted alongside Trump in August for racketeering and other alleged crimes stemming from the former president’s effort to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
Powell’s Georgia-based attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday evening. A spokesman for the Fulton DA’s office declined to comment.
The proffers were sent to the attorneys for all the remaining defendants in the case as part of the discovery process, according to people with knowledge.
In the portions of the Powell proffer viewed by the AJC, the attorney shared details about the heated Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, in which Trump, personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and others discussed Trump’s chances of winning the election and appointing Powell special counsel.
Powell said she, Flynn, Trump and Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, were the only ones in the meeting who believed it was still possible at that Trump could edge out Democrat Joe Biden, who at that point had won the Electoral College vote. She said that’s why she argued there needed to be a forensic examination of voting machines from places with “the most statistical anomalies or impossibilities according to the experts.”
“I wanted to show definitively if that’s what it took so we could all put it to rest,” she told prosecutors.
But even though Trump seemed interested in appointing Powell special counsel and granting her security clearance, according to Powell, she got the impression almost immediately that it wasn’t going to happen based on the demeanor of Giuliani and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
She said that when she called Meadows the next morning to follow up, he “essentially laughed” and said, “You know, it’s not going to happen.”
Powell also shed more light on her frequent communication with Trump in the weeks following the election, despite the campaign distancing itself from her publicly. She said that Trump inquired about the status of her lawsuits challenging election results.
She said she hadn’t spoken with Trump since January 2021.
Separately, Ellis recounted to prosecutors a conversation she had with Dan Scavino, a senior White House aide, on Dec. 19, 2020, according to ABC. Scavino reportedly told her “the boss,” meaning Trump, “is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.’”
When Ellis responded that “it doesn’t quite work that way,” Scavino said, “we don’t care,” according to a portion of the Ellis proffer released by the network.
The witness comments could help prosecutors solidify Trump’s state of mind as he challenged Georgia’s election results. The DA’s office will need to prove the former president acted with corrupt intent.
