Sidney Powell, who made false claims about Tarrant election, pleads guilty in Georgia case

Dallas attorney Sidney Powell, who made false allegations about the 2020 election in Tarrant County, pleaded guilty to reduced charges Thursday over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in Georgia.

Former Tarrant County elections administrator Heider Garcia detailed Powell’s baseless claims in 2022 in written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Before he worked in the public sector, Garcia had worked for 13 years Smartmatic, the elections company that sued Fox News for defamation over its election fraud claims.

“Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani made baseless accusations of voter fraud and manipulation of election results,” Garcia wrote in his testimony. He said they “accused Smartmatic, one of my former employers, as one of the two main actors of ‘the steal,’ and from there the conspiracy theories about Tarrant County just spiraled out of control. But it was not indirect references, it was also direct accusations from Ms. Powell herself:

“• On the Lou Dobbs show she stated ‘… we know that one of the Smartmatic people went to Tarrant County, Texas and turned that county blue.’

“• On Twitter she posted ‘Gee whiz! I wonder how #TarrantCounty Texas went #blue so easily after hiring a #Smartmatic guy?!’, with a picture of me included.

“• On a separate post on Twitter, she stated ‘And #Tarrant County just went #blue?! What a coincidence! #ImpoundTheMachines #DominionVotingSystems #Smartmatic What could possibly go wrong with company called #Dominion?’”

Garcia resigned from his Tarrant County job in April, citing disagreements with County Judge Tim O’Hare over how to run transparent elections. On Wednesday, he accepted the position of elections administrator in Dallas County.

Powell’s plea didn’t surprise Garcia.

“There was no other thing that could have happened because we knew she was lying,” he said in a Thursday interview with the Star-Telegram. “It was just a matter of time and, like everything else, when you put the facts out there, the only lie there ever was is all ‘the election was stolen’ crap.”

He later added, “I’m glad the justice system called her bluff.”

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Powell, Trump and 17 others were charged with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law. She entered the plea a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.

She will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.

This report contains information from The Associated Press.