As much as I want to see the house of cards collapse, that toadies like her get off nearly Scott free is a real miscarriage of justice IMO. She should be serving actual time, and not in a white-collar-resort prison.
The problem is that the actions the state can prove only amount to misdemeanors. That’s why RICO is so powerful. Even if you only did misdemeanors, if you were part of the conspiracy then you get lumped in with all the felonies everyone else committed too. The whole point of RICO is to roll up the underlings with the bosses and try to peel off underlings in exchange for cooperation.
By pleaing out, Powell is separating herself from the others and so those felony RICO charges don’t apply anymore. All that said, this is all at the discretion of the DA and the judge. If Powell fucks up the terms of her deal she’s in for six years of Georgia state prison. At 68 years old, that’d got to be a pretty good motivator for good behavior and cooperation.
I totally get it, and in the grand scheme it makes perfect sense. You let the little fish get off easy in order to secure a conviction on the big fish.
With that being said, I share the feeling of what u/enkers said above. It’s disappointing that a lawyer, who damn well should have known better, can engage in a plot to overthrow our democracy and then get off with a slap on the wrist. It doesn’t exactly serve as a deterrent for future conspirators, knowing that there are no serious consequences for helping “the bigger fish” commit crimes.
She always seemed like one of the biggest instigators to me. She drove a lot of the worst rhetoric and made up a lot of pure bullshit. Like you said, as a lawyer she should have been even more aware than her co-defendants how illegal this shit was.
I hope there’s good strategy behind the decision to allow her to plea. If her testimony can directly implicate Trump or others it might be worthwhile. She also might be dumb enough to violate the terms of her plea, in which case you get her confession AND you get to throw the book at her.
