When Sidney Powell, a top ally of Donald Trump, pleaded guilty Thursday to crimes associated with the 2020 election, lawyers for many Jan. 6 defendants were stunned by her relatively meager sentence: six years of probation and a modest fine.
For years, those lawyers — and some judges — have lamented that the thousands who breached the Capitol were used as pawns and dupes by Trump, Powell and their associates in a bid to subvert the election. So Powell’s plea was the first taste of accountability for Trump’s inner circle. Yet her punishment, Jan. 6 defense lawyers noted, paled in comparison to even some of the low-level offenders who entered the Capitol that day and now face consequences that may dog them for life.
“Gobsmacked is certainly an appropriate description considering the sentences that have been imposed against others who believed the lies spread by Donald Trump, Sidney Powell and others,” said Bjorn Brunvand, whose client Robert Palmer was sentenced by Judge Tanya Chutkan to 63 months in prison for assaulting officers at the U.S. Capitol. “The rules we all share are not applied equitably to all. Frequently, deals are made with the highest-ranking players in criminal conspiracies, while the pawns receive the most significant sentences.”
Powell’s mild sentence was a reflection of an apparent cooperation deal she struck with prosecutors. Another close Trump ally, Kenneth Chesebro, entered a similar plea deal on Friday that will allow him to avoid prison. (Brunvand and other lawyers for Jan. 6 defendants spoke with POLITICO before news emerged of Chesebro’s plea.)
Both Powell and Chesebro provided statements to prosecutors and promised to testify for the government in the racketeering case in Fulton County, Ga., where prosecutors have charged Trump and 18 others with conspiring to subvert the 2020 election. It’s unclear whether Powell or Chesebro will testify against Trump himself, but they were among his closest advisers in the final frantic weeks of his presidency as his efforts to overturn the election grew increasingly desperate. Their testimony could offer firsthand accounts that give jurors unparalleled insight into Trump’s mindset.
District Attorney Fani Willis initially charged Powell with seven felonies, including racketeering and conspiracy to commit election fraud, for her involvement in an effort to unlawfully access voting equipment in Georgia’s Coffee County. Powell initially denied the charges and fought to have them thrown out, but her plea deal includes an admission to many of the facts prosecutors alleged. Ultimately, she pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor charges, which will be wiped from her record under Georgia’s “first-time offender” policies as long as she doesn’t commit additional crimes in the near future.
Powell’s lawyer, Brian Rafferty, and a spokesperson for Willis did not respond to requests for comment.
Attorneys for several Jan. 6 defendants told POLITICO that it seemed incongruous for foot soldiers to face steep penalties — often including jail time — while Powell, an architect of the effort to overturn the election, was permitted to negotiate a misdemeanor plea deal.
“This is sick and scandalous,” said Carmen Hernandez, a defense attorney whose former clients include Philadelphia Proud Boy Zachary Rehl. “There are J6 defendants with no priors who’ve served jail time. … It’s obscene given that she was a prominent attorney and was one of the leading and loudest of the ‘stolen election’ BS.”
Rehl, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison after a jury convicted him of seditious conspiracy in May, quoted Powell — and her chest-thumping promise to “release the Kraken” as she sought to overturn the election results in court — in his social media exchanges with other Proud Boys.
Norm Pattis, who represents Florida Proud Boy Joseph Biggs and InfoWars broadcaster Owen Shroyer in Jan. 6 criminal cases, said it simply didn’t sit right to see Powell receive light punishment.
“Ms. Powell must have offered Georgia a lot for this deal. In the meantime, ordinary J6 defendants, who listened to her, get severe sentences,” Pattis said. “None of this promotes respect for the law..”
Biggs, one of Rehl’s co-defendants, was sentenced last month to 17 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other felony convictions. Shroyer, who pleaded to a single misdemeanor, was sentenced recently to 60 days in prison.
Other Jan. 6 defense attorneys, however, said it’s not surprising that Powell’s cooperation was a white whale for prosecutors. Her cooperation could reshape the calculus of many of Trump’s other co-defendants, arm prosecutors with explosive new evidence and even influence special counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing probe in which Powell has been identified as an as-yet-uncharged co-conspirator.
Powell, they say, simply has something to offer that most Jan. 6 defendants do not.
“They really, really wanted her cooperation. She will be an explosively helpful witness,” said Gene Rossi, who represents William Isaacs, a Jan. 6 defendant who joined members of the Oath Keepers at the Capitol. “If I were the state prosecutor, I could not ask for a better … cooperator testifying against President Trump and the others than the attorney who was going to be the special counsel for the ‘stop the steal’ investigation.”
Rossi noted that Powell’s deal also sends a signal to other Trump co-defendants “that if you come in early, you will get a bargain deal. If you wait until the end, you will get hammered.”
Scott Weinberg, who also represented a member of the Oath Keepers in a Jan. 6 trial, said he was “hardly surprised” by the outcome.
“With these numerous prosecutions, indictments, involving massive resources both criminal and civil, it seems the government would hand out a jaywalking ticket to Charles Manson if it meant securing a conviction against Trump,” he said.
Both Weinberg and Rossi referenced the cooperation deal that Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano reached with the government to testify against mobster John Gotti, even after confessing to a role in 19 murders.
“Not comparing Trump to Gotti,” Weinberg said, “but if the government wants you, they’ll get you.”
A U.S. Navy destroyer intercepted several missiles launched from Yemen while operating in the region on Thursday, according to a Defense Department official.
It is not yet clear if the ship was the intended target, but no damage to the ship was reported, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss an incident that had not yet been announced.
The intercepts happened as U.S. bases in Syria have endured multiple drone attacks over the past two days. American forces stopped two separate drone strikes in Syria on Thursday, hours after they shot down three unmanned aerial systems targeting troops in Iraq early Wednesday, according to a U.S. official and another person familiar with the incidents.
The Pentagon has 2,500 troops in Iraq supporting and training Iraqi forces, with another 900 more based in Syria who are working with the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The missile intercepts also come as the U.S. continues to bolster its military presence in the Middle East in response to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as well as Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this summer sent ships carrying rapid response Marine units to the Persian Gulf, and those ships are now moving toward the eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Israel.
The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is already in the area, where it will soon by joined by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group.
The missiles also come as armed drones have attacked U.S. troops stationed in bases in Iraq and Syria.
CNN first reported the news of the destroyer incident.
With the increasing likelihood that House Republicans will empower Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry to run the House temporarily amid its speakership crisis, another question looms: Would the move put an acting speaker into the line of presidential succession?
When all leadership positions are present and accounted for, the speaker of the House is usually second in line to take up the mantle after the vice president.
But legal experts say that even empowering McHenry to move legislation isn't the same as being the real thing.
“By calling this person speaker pro tem, that by definition, means there isn't an actual speaker,” said Michigan State law professor Brian Kalt. “So whatever powers they give him, parliamentary powers to run things in the House, as long as he's not the speaker, he's not in line of succession.”
Kalt said that the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 states that the speaker must be the speaker, leaving no wiggle room for a speaker pro tem to be in line.
Eric Schickler, co-director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies, concurred.
“Speaker pro tem, even if authorized to act as if he were the speaker or with some of those powers, it's still not the same,” Schickler said.
House Republicans have been in a whirlwind leadership crisis since voting for Kevin McCarthy to be removed from his speaker post earlier this month. Rep. Jim Jordan’s second failure to win the votes to secure the gavel for himself on Wednesday has sparked bipartisan talks about empowering McHenry to bring legislation to the floor — particularly spending bills, given a Nov. 17 funding deadline. POLITICO reported earlier Thursday that Jordan will back that proposal as he pauses voting on his own speaker bid.
And since a President McHenry wouldn’t become a contingency plan, the line would skip to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who is the president pro tempore of the Senate and typically third in succession to the presidency.
This means that House Republicans would be skipped over if President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris were unfit to serve, which could cause a dispute between Republicans and Democrats.
Schickler said that in the unlikely event that the president and vice president can’t serve, a court battle could ensue over who would become the leader of the country.
“One of the issues with succession law is that by putting the speaker next in line, the speaker could be from a different party,” Kalt said. “It could cause a lot of problems.”
The Senate on Wednesday voted to overturn a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule requiring lenders to report demographic data on small-business loan recipients, defying a White House veto threat.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who sponsored the bill to invalidate the measure under the Congressional Review Act, called the regulation “intrusive” in a floor speech before the Senate voted 53-44 to scrap it. The House must still act on the resolution.
“The bank has to ask the small-business person if that small-business person is gay,” Kennedy said. “What a private American does with another private, adult American in the privacy of their bedroom — we are free, so long as it doesn’t break any laws, to express our sexuality however we want to, and it’s none of the CFPB’s business.”
Supporters of the rule say it will help ensure that lenders distribute loans equitably to underrepresented borrowers.
Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) defended the rule, saying it would shed light on “gaps in the small-business lending market.”
The consumer bureau in March finalized the rule under Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank law requiring financial institutions to turn over information about the race, ethnicity and gender of small business loan recipients, in addition to information on lending decisions and the price of credit. The first data reports, for lenders above a certain threshold of transactions, are due in October 2024.
The rule would “give the public key data on this market to ensure that banks and nonbanks are serving small businesses fairly,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said at the time.
The White House on Wednesday threatened to veto the bill.
The 1071 rule “will provide small business owners, lenders, and the public with critical information about the $1.7 trillion small business financing market,” the White House said in a statement of administration policy. “If enacted, this resolution would harm all those that stand to benefit from this expanded transparency and accountability.”
Republicans and banks have pushed back on the rule, accusing Chopra of regulatory overreach and arguing that the rule is both invasive and onerous to comply with.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the resolution, casting it as an effort to “chip away at yet another example of the Biden administration’s run-away regulatory state.”
“Washington Democrats want to tie small business loans to diversity quotas,” McConnell said.
A federal court in Texas suspended enforcement of the rule for members of the American Bankers Association in July. The ABA, the Texas Bankers Association and Rio Bank had sued to block the rule until the Supreme Court resolves a case challenging the CFPB's funding structure. The high court, which heard arguments in that case this month, is expected to rule on the matter by June.
Kennedy said the agency had “totally perverted” what Congress intended when it passed Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank in 2010.
“[The CFPB] took the 13 pieces of information we, the Congress, asked for and they expanded it to 81 — all of a sudden they want a book,” Kennedy said.
“This private information has got to be collected by the CFPB … and it’s not like the CFPB is exactly a wizard when it comes to data security,” he added, pointing to the breach of 256,000 consumers’ data earlier this year by a CFPB employee.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order against Donald Trump is the first major consequence of his life as a criminal defendant. But in some ways, the order raises more questions than it answers — including how Chutkan intends to enforce her restrictions on a politician who never stops talking.
The veteran Obama-appointed jurist ruled Monday that Trump’s pretrial attacks on potential witnesses and others threatened the integrity of the upcoming trial on charges stemming from Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election. She barred Trump from continuing to publicly berate special counsel Jack Smith and his team, court staff, or any “reasonably foreseeable witness.”
Chutkan followed up with a three-page order on Tuesday that spelled out her ruling in writing. But it left many details murky — and so far, Trump has shown no signs of piping down. His legal team also filed an immediate appeal.
Here are some unanswered questions about the Trump gag order.
This is the whole ballgame. During Monday’s hearing, Chutkan pressed Smith’s team for their thoughts, acknowledging that punishing a former president presents different obstacles than the typical subject of a criminal gag order.
“An order is sort of pointless if you don’t have a mechanism to enforce it,” Chutkan said.
But her oral ruling Monday and written order Tuesday were silent on how she’ll determine potential punishments for Trump, which could range from in-court scoldings to financial penalties to pretrial incarceration.
Chutkan also could try to limit Trump’s use of social media — his favored platform for many of his attacks. That’s the approach a federal judge adopted in 2019 in the case of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone. After Stone threatened the judge on Instagram, the judge barred him from using social media.
Chutkan, though, is plainly aware that Trump’s supporters would portray any such measures as acts of political persecution. But she also cited Supreme Court precedent emphasizing that she is obligated to protect her proceedings “from prejudicial outside interferences.”
Senior assistant special counsel Molly Gaston said Chutkan has the full range of options at her disposal, but Trump’s attorney John Lauro scoffed at the idea that the judge would even contemplate jailing Trump ahead of the 2024 election. Lauro called any pre-election enforcement against Trump “impossible.”
Chutkan’s only hint of a plan came at the end of Monday’s hearing, when she said she would raise any purported violations “sua sponte” — meaning, at her own initiative — and dole out potential punishment.
When Smith’s team asked Chutkan to impose a gag order, they proposed barring Trump and his surrogates from making inflammatory statements that might “prejudice” the case. But Chutkan’s order used different language, instead imposing restrictions on “all interested parties.”
The verbiage may be a nod to the fact that her order also binds the special counsel’s office, but it uses broader language that doesn’t have an immediately obvious definition. And it could become a complicated matter when figures like Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., or Trump’s political allies launch attacks on the special counsel, the court or others covered by the order.
Chutkan’s order bars statements that “target” Smith or his staff, defense attorneys, court staff or witnesses, but the judge never describes what she means by the term. She could’ve sought to rule out all public comments by Trump or his lawyers that simply mention the special counsel or his aides, but she didn’t do that.
Gaston had proposed that the judge bar comments that are both “disparaging” and “inflammatory,” but the judge complained during the Monday hearing that those words were hard to define. “Target” is a bit clearer, but still lacks certainty about what kind of speech the judge is trying to prevent.
A broad reading of the judge’s order could spell the end for TV appearances by Trump and his lawyers addressing in any way developments in the D.C. election-subversion prosecution or the other case Smith is pressing against Trump in Florida. In that case, Trump is charged with obstruction of justice and illegally retaining classified information.
Chutkan did make clear on Tuesday that Trump remains free to “make statements criticizing the government generally, including the current administration or the Department of Justice; statements asserting that Defendant is innocent of the charges against him, or that his prosecution is politically motivated.”
The preface to Chutkan’s order points to Trump’s use of the word “thugs” to describe people involved in the legal process — a term she dwelled on at Monday’s hearing as well, worrying that it was a signal to Trump’s followers to do harm.
“If you call people thugs enough times, doesn’t that suggest that someone should get them off the streets?” Chutkan wondered.
Trump used the term again shortly before the judge’s written order was released.
“This is a railroading. It’s all coming out of the Department of Justice. It’s all set up by Biden and his thugs that he’s surrounded with,” the former president told reporters in New York Tuesday morning, without a specific reference to Smith or his team.
Trump’s lawyers filed papers on Tuesday afternoon initiating an appeal of the gag order, and although his lawyers have not yet laid out their arguments for the appeal, Lauro made clear at the Monday hearing that an appeal would likely focus on alleged vagueness in the judge’s directive.
During oral arguments on the gag order proposal, Chutkan made clear that she viewed former Vice President Mike Pence as differently situated than others Trump has criticized with his social media invective. Pence is a possible witness against him in the election-subversion case — but he is also actively campaigning against Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.
Chutkan singled out Pence by name in her written order, emphasizing that the restrictions she is imposing “shall not be construed to prohibit … statements criticizing the campaign platforms or policies of Defendant’s current political rivals, such as former Vice President Pence.”
But the line between impermissible attacks on Pence’s truthfulness or character and those pertaining to his “platforms or policies” may be hard to locate — particularly when a central premise of Pence’s candidacy is his willingness to stand up to Trump on Jan. 6 and refuse to subvert the election. That confrontation is at the heart of Smith’s charges against the former president.
How Trump’s appeal of the gag order will fare is far from clear, since there’s little legal precedent involving defendants challenging gag orders imposed on them in criminal cases — and there is no precedent involving a defendant who is simultaneously running for president.
In the Roger Stone case in 2019, Stone and his family members filed an immediate petition challenging his gag order at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court essentially punted on the issue, saying Stone used the wrong legal mechanism to appeal and his kin should have brought their complaints to the trial judge first before seeking relief from the appeals court.
