These Are Not The Defenses They Are Looking For

 This is not the legal defense Trump thinks it is:

I've spoken to Mark Meadows many, many times over the years, and he strongly believed the election was rigged," Trump said before walking into his New York fraud trial.

Nor is this a legal offense:

On her social-media accounts, Powell has continued to push claims that the 2020 election was rigged and that prosecutors in Georgia who brought the criminal case against her were politically motivated. The newsletter published by her dark-money group has shared articles arguing the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, "extorted" her guilty plea.

It does call into question Powell’s value as a witness. But I suspect Georgia was happy to clear out the underbrush by getting her out of the way. “Flipping” on Trump will simply mean reporting truthfully about what Powell knows. Her opinions about the election outcome are irrelevant, but might keep her from being called to testify, at worst.

Mainly, believing the 2020 election was “rigged” does not justify extra-legal actions of the type Powell has plead guilty to committing. If that was a sound defense, she’d have gone to trial. Yes, Powell can take the stand and say her guilty plea was “extorted,” but then her testimony at the hearing where the plea was entered will be read back to her (the hearing where she said she knew what she was doing and did it freely). The kind of thing prosecutors generally do with witnesses who have accepted plea deals in return for testimony.

In the end, it isn’t what Powell thinks about what she did, or what Meadows said about the election (Trump’s statements are irrelevant; he’s never going to waive the 5th and testify about what Meadows said). It’s about what was done. Trump could think he was saving the Republic; but once his court challenges were exhausted, so were his avenues to challenge the outcome. The efforts he’s been charged criminally for were criminal: period. Whether he can be proven guilty of those offenses is another matter. But the defenses he’s offering, are not defenses at all.

And what Sidney Powell is saying now doesn’t really obviate the fact that she plead guilty to six criminal counts, rather than go to trial. She blinked, and now she’s trying to say the sun was in her eyes. That doesn’t change her guilty plea.