How Trump conspiracy lawyer Sidney Powell got chomped by her own ‘kraken’

MAGA attorney Sidney Powell rocketed to notoriety in 2020 amid her brash claims about election fraud and lawsuits based on esoteric technical jargon purported to support fantastical narratives about foreign interference.

She promised to “release the kraken” in a bid to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.

But Powell’s plea deal on Thursday marks a significant win for prosecutors in the Georgia criminal racketeering case against Trump and his allies — including Powell — for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Her agreement stemming from her involvement in a secret effort to access and copy election files in Coffee County, Ga., increases pressure on her co-defendants, up to and including Trump his former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who competed with her for access to electronic voting machines at the center of their alleged conspiracy.

Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties, according to the Washington Post. As part of her deal, she is required to pay a $6,000 fine and $2,700 in restitution to the state of Georgia, turn over documents and testify truthfully against her co-defendants.

While Powell, along with the other 18 co-defendants in the case, was accused of participating in a larger conspiracy that includes a fake electors scheme, attempting to corrupt the U.S. Justice Department and harassment of two Georgia election workers, the specific accusations against Powell were limited to one relatively obscure episode.

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In it, Trump’s allies dispatched a team to collect sensitive election data from Dominion Voting Systems machines in an elections office in rural Coffee County only one day after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Fulton County prosecutors alleged that Powell “corruptly conspired” with others, including a former local Republican official who signed on as a Trump elector, a Georgia bail bondsman, and the elections director in Coffee County, of unlawfully accessing “secure voting equipment and voter data,” including “ballot images, voting equipment software and personal voter information.”

The case against Powell was chiefly built around the claim, to which she has now conceded in her guilty plea.

Powell’s plea reflects a tacit acknowledgement that she contracted and paid SullivanStrickler, an Atlanta-based computer forensics company, to access and copy data from the Coffee County elections office. Her plea marks an about-face from a two-fold defense strategy in which her lawyer argued in a series of court filings last month that no crime had been committed and that if one had been, his client was not involved.

“Members of this conspiracy — of this enterprise — go to Coffee County — and they take things that aren’t theirs,” John Floyd, an expert on Georgia racketeering lawyer who is assisting Fulton County prosecutors, told Judge Scott McAfee during a hearing earlier this month. “They copy ballots. They copy data. They copy other information, and they copy software that belongs to Dominion.”

Floyd rejected an initial argument by Powell’s lawyer that the breach was lawful just because Misty Hampton, the former elections director, extended an invitation to Trump’s allies. Beyond arguing that Powell and her co-defendants defrauded the state by breaching the election equipment, he told McAfee that they also took Dominion Voting Systems’ private property.

Powell is the second defendant to plead guilty in the case, following Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, who pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties, and has agreed to testify against his co-defendants, including Powell.

With her guilty plea on Thursday, the “kraken” Powell promised to release has now come back around to envelop her.

How Powell reached this point is a story steeped in data, drama and betrayals on a most Trump-y team of rivals.

Deflecting blame on to allies and rivals

Powell’s defense, before she pleaded guilty, provides a window into the overlapping efforts by her co-defendants, most notably former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to access the voting machines in order to gather data that could be used to fuel dubious claims of election fraud and ultimately overturn the election.

Emails, phone texts and testimony unearthed in legal discovery for the case, as well as through the investigation by the now-disbanded U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, paint a most complicated picture of allegiance and antagonism among Trump’s closest MAGA loyalists.

They show that while Powell and Giuliani had become bitter rivals by the time of the Coffee County breach, they shared an interest in accessing voting machines, and their respective teams worked with an overlapping pool of lawyers, political operatives and technicians to achieve that objective.

Many of these individuals have not been charged to date, although texts, emails and testimony show they were involved in coordinating data collection and analysis. The materials also show that officials in the Trump White House were apprised of their efforts.

Rudy Giuliani points to a map as he speaks to the press about various lawsuits related to the 2020 election, inside the Republican National Committee headquarters on Nov. 19, 2020, in Washington, DC. Also pictured, at center, is attorney Sidney Powell. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Evidence against Powell chiefly comprised a contract signed with SullivanStrickler on Dec. 6, 2020, to collect and analyze election data from Dominion voting machines — not in Coffee County, but in Antrim County, Mich., where Trump allies were then scrutinizing election-night irregularities. The Coffee County breach, which took place a month later, was performed under the same agreement, the government alleges.

Phone texts that Powell herself submitted as evidence to the Fulton County, Ga. court, if anything, bolstered the prosecutors’ case against her. They show the chief operating officer of SullivanStrickler instructing an employee two days after the visit to the Coffee County elections office that “we are not uploading/giving access to anyone until we are paid.”

Later, he added, “Let’s keep communications quiet for now. I am now negotiating directly with Sidney.”

The company’s director of data risk and mitigation testified in a separate civil case last year that Powell was the customer and paid the bills for the data collection in Coffee County.

But Powell’s lawyer, Brian Rafferty, seized on the fact that metadata from the contract shows that a man named Jim Penrose was the author of his client’s electronic signature.

“It shows right here in the middle of this document that Jim Penrose signed this,” Rafferty told the court earlier this month. “And if you look at the contract, it’s not even a signature; it’s somebody typed her name. So, when it says, ‘Sidney Powell,’ somebody typed it. And the person who typed it is James Penrose.”

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Penrose is a cybersecurity consultant and former National Security Agency official who worked closely with Powell in the period following the 2020 election. Powell acknowledged in her testimony to the House Select January 6 Committee last year that Penrose was part of a group of Trump allies that joined her at Tomotley, defamation lawyer Lin Wood’s estate in South Carolina, beginning in mid-November 2020 to strategize how to overturn the election.

Penrose could not be reached for comment for this story.

In a court filing, Rafferty also deflected blame onto Giuliani’s legal team. He noted that a different attorney, Preston Haliburton, submitted an open records request to the Coffee County Board of Elections & Registrations. Haliburton is a professional boxer-turned-personal injury lawyer in Atlanta. At the time, he identified himself as “counsel of record for the Giuliani legal team.”

Texts from the encrypted Signal messaging app obtained in discovery show that an invitation letter from Coffee County Election Director Misty Hampton, in response to Haliburton’s request, then made its way to Katherine Friess, a member of the Giuliani legal team. Rafferty noted that yet another lawyer — Charles Bundren — was included in separate Signal chat to discuss the Coffee County election data that took place on the day of the breach.

‘Lives in both worlds’

Testimony by Powell and Giuliani to the House Select January Committee suggests their efforts to access the Dominion voting machines, leading to the Coffee County trip, were significantly more intertwined than either might want to admit.

Giuliani and his co-counsel Jenna Ellis — also a defendant in the Georgia racketeering case — had conspicuously distanced themselves from Powell with a public statement indicating she was working on her own and not representing the Trump campaign on Nov. 22, 2020.

But just two weeks later, Powell’s team was executing a contract with SullivanStrickler to collect and analyze the election data from Dominion voting machines in Antrim County, Mich., while Friess, with the Giuliani legal team, flew to the rural community to meet with Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy.

Another significant player close to both Powell and Giuliani — a retired Army colonel named Phil Waldron — was also involved in the effort to access the voting machines in Antrim County, according to Giuliani.

Giuliani told the House Select January 6 Committee that “Katherine Friess was in Antrim County with Phil Waldron when that was being done.” Powell also testified to the committee that she believed that Waldron inspected the voting machines in Antrim County.

A retired Army colonel who specialized in psychological influence operations, Waldron now owns a distillery in Texas. Although he has not been charged, his name would come up repeatedly in relation to the various efforts to access voting machines following the 2020 election.

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The committee subpoenaed Waldron after obtaining a 38-page PowerPoint presentation that he circulated among members of Congress, and that committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) called “an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election.” Waldron sued to block the committee, claiming that the information sought by Congress was part of a confidential and proprietary work product under a contract he signed with unnamed attorneys to investigate the 2020 election.

Giuliani testified to the committee that he considered Waldron to be part of his team. Powell also worked with Waldron and told the committee she valued his expertise.

“I know he was looking at logistics for, like, for example, if we could get access to the machines,” Powell testified. “He knew — or my understanding was he knew — people that would know how to analyze them — you know, reputable, unimpeachable, military, nonpartisan, bipartisan, whatever you want to call it, but professionals who would know how to look at whatever it was and make sense of it.”

Waldron is widely believed to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the Fulton County indictment. As one of the overt acts cited in the alleged conspiracy, Powell sent an email to SullivanStrickler Chief Operating Officer Paul Maggio on Dec. 21, 2020, instructing him that she, along with “Individual 6” and others, “were to immediately ‘receive a copy of all data’ obtained by SullivanStrickler LLC from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Michigan.” Numerousmediaoutlets have identified “Individual 6” as Waldron.

Waldron could not be reached by phone or email for comment for this story.

Jim Penrose has described Waldron as the “crossover” between the Powell and Giuliani teams.

“Phil Waldron is the one who lives in both worlds,” Penrose told an Arizona woman named Staci Burk during a phone call on Christmas day in 2020. “Most of the remainder of the team operates independently of one another.”

At the time, the Powell team was cultivating Burk as a potential witness.

Burk is now suing Powell and five other defendants for civil conspiracy, violation of civil rights, false imprisonment and assault, alleging that Powell’s associates attempted to pressure her into signing an affidavit that could be used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to seize voting machines. Burk’s suit also alleges that the defendants frightened her into allowing a private security group to take up residence in her home. Members of the security group ultimately stole Burk’s cell phone and took it to the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., a hub for high-level Trump allies on Jan. 6.

Burk obtained a default judgment against Powell in the case on Oct. 2 from a federal court clerk in Arizona, after Powell failed to respond to her complaint.

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But Powell’s lawyer, Robert H. Holmes, told Raw Story that “the default was taken fraudulently” and that “Ms. Powell was never served” with a summons for the lawsuit. Based on Burk’s request, ABC Legal Services, the process serving company, opened an investigation into the delivery of the summons. According to a report, the process server reported that he left the summons outside the door of an apartment in Dallas on Sept. 2.

Burk provided a copy of the report, which was completed on Wednesday, to Raw Story.

“When the server knocked on the door to the listed unit, the resident inside looked through the peephole and asked who he was and what he wanted in a hostile manner,” the report states. “The server stated his name, and told the resident that he was looking for Sidney Powell as he had some legal documents for her. The resident said to leave the documents at the door because she was not going to open the door. The server noted that he receives that reaction often since he is an African-American male.”

The report adds that the process server “left the documents outside the door,” and then from down the hallway, “saw the woman crack the door open and grab the documents” before returning inside.

The report concludes by indicating that ABC Legal Services is offering Burk the option of having the summons re-served on Powell.

If Penrose’s later actions called into question his loyalties, during the time period when Trump allies were trying to get access to the voting machines in Coffee County he made it clear that he was on Team “Kraken.”

“I’m investigating this on behalf of Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, right, the people that are gonna take this right up to the president and the Supreme Court, and work on these cases,” he told Burk during the Christmas Day phone call in 2020.

Penrose told Burk at the time that the team had already spent $75,000 to investigate claims about illegal ballots on airplanes before determining that there was nothing to substantiate them.

Obsession with voting machines takes hold

Trump and other White House officials received frequent updates on the efforts of the Giuliani and Powell teams, working in tandem, to access the voting machines in late 2020 and early 2021.

Friess, one of the lawyers on Giuliani’s team, forwarded talking points and a press release about a report produced on the Antrim County election data to Giuliani around Dec. 14. The email also went to Bernard Kerik, the team’s chief investigator; and Boris Epshteyn, another lawyer.

“Here’s — the press release is approved,” Friess wrote in the email, which was obtained by the House Select January 6 Committee. “Needs to go to the White House. President and VP just briefed. They are thrilled.”

Kerik then forwarded the email to an aide to White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, the email chain shows.

The report contained the bold claim that “the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.”

Trump predictably seized on the report, tweeting, “WOW. This report shows massive fraud. Election changing result!”

But an analysis published in March 2021 by J. Alex Halderman, co-chairman of the Michigan Election Security Advisory Commission, concluded that the report “contains an extraordinary number of false, inaccurate, or unsubstantiated statements and conclusions.”

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The false claims about Dominion voting machines were at the heart of a contentious, late-night meeting at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020 in which Powell, along with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, urged Trump to use the military to seize voting machines and re-run the election.

The meeting reportedly devolved into a screaming match between Powell’s entourage and members of the White House counsel team.

Giuliani also joined the meeting after being alerted that Powell, Flynn and Byrne were at the White House. He proposed an alternative to the military option floated by Powell’s camp.

“His point of view was that in some way the campaign, I believe, was going to be able to secure access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure,” Derek Lyons, a former Trump administration official who was present at the meeting, told the committee.

Lyons added that Giuliani argued that examination of the machines in Georgia could produce “evidence that could then be leveraged to gain additional access to additional machines.”

Giuliani confirmed in his testimony that “we were trying to use the civil process to get access to the machines,” adding that he vaguely recalled “negotiating with one of the boards for access to some of the machines.”

‘Name calling and misogynistic behavior’

After the Dec. 18 meeting, Powell found herself ostracized from Trump’s inner circle at the White House, most notably Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — also a co-defendant in the Fulton County case.

“It is imperative I be included in meetings scheduled today with you, Rudy, and with the President, about the machines and any of these issues,” Powell wrote in an email to Meadows on Dec. 21, which was obtained by the House Select January 6 Committee.

Powell would later explain to congressional investigators that the urgency of meeting with Trump, Meadows and Giuliani was that she didn’t trust the Giuliani team to handle the mission appropriately.

“Rudy was off, you know, in a couple different directions trying to access the machines,” Powell said. “And I was concerned that it needed to be a process that was completely transparent and preserved so that there could be no question about it and that the people doing it have military qualifications or credentials approved by both sides, however you want to put that, but, anyway, unimpeachable credentials, and perform the examination in a recorded, transparent process. And I don’t know how Rudy and people were doing that.”

The Fulton County indictment alleges that Powell made false claims to the House Select January 6 Committee through statements in her testimony that minimized her role in the efforts to access voting machines in Michigan and Georgia.

The feud between Powell and Giuliani reached a nadir during a Dec. 21, 2020, meeting in Meadows’ office at the White House, before Meadows shunted her away from a scheduled meeting with Trump. Powell recalled that Friess and Waldron were also there, and an email obtained by the House Select January 6 Committee confirms Waldron’s attendance.

Powell described the meeting as “the epitome of devolution into name calling and misogynistic behavior from Mr. Giuliani toward me.”

She added, “I do remember Mr. Giuliani just absolutely lashing out about me being unfit to practice law, called me several names. And, I mean, he just went on and on.”

Following the meeting in Meadows’ office, Powell made her disdain for Giuliani clear in a Dec. 22 email to the two men and to Molly Michael, Trump’s assistant, that was obtained by the committee.

“Also be advised Michigan trip was not set up properly on ground with locals,” Powell complained. “Team is there with no access. It has cost us great expense and should be reimbursed by Rudy’s funding. Georgia machine access promised in meeting Friday night to happen Sunday has not come through.”

‘Y’all are welcome any time’

Late on New Year’s Eve, the Giuliani team received a welcome surprise.

“We have received your open record request, and I will be speaking with my board, and per Georgia law I do not see any problem assisting you with anything ya’ll need [in] accordance to Georgia Law,” Hampton, the Coffee County election director, wrote in a response on official letterhead. “Y’all are welcome in our office any time.”

A Georgia Bureau of Investigation summary obtained by Powell through discovery indicates that Hampton’s letter came in response to an open records request by Preston Haliburton, the Atlanta lawyer who identified himself as “counsel of record for the Giuliani legal team.”

Haliburton also identified himself as counsel for Cathy Latham, the Coffee County GOP chair, when he told the Georgia Senate Election Law Study Subcommittee that she was claiming whistleblower status during a Dec. 30, 2020, hearing. Latham is also a defendant in the Fulton County case, and is accused of participating in both the Coffee County breach and the fake elector scheme.

Haliburton did not return a message left by Raw Story at his office last week.

A Signal group chat obtained by Powell through discovery also suggests that the Giuliani team initiated the Coffee County project. The chat opens with a message from a woman named Jennifer Jackson on Jan. 1, 2021.

“Just handed [sic] in DC with the Mayor,” Jackson’s text reads. “Huge things starting to come together.

“Most immediately, we were just granted access -by written invitation! To the Coffee County Systens. [sic] Yay!” the message continues. “Putting details together now with Phil, Preston, Jovan etc. Want to give you a heads up for your team.”

“Phil” and “Preston” appear to refer to Phil Waldron and Preston Haliburton, while “Jovan” appears to refer to Jovan Pulitzer, a former treasure hunter to whom Trump allies turned for advice on forensic analysis of ballots.

Jackson closed her message by writing that the message “was from Katherine,” likely referring to Katherine Friess, the lawyer on the Giuliani team.

While the Giuliani team celebrated the invitation, the Signal group chat shows the SullivanStrickler employees deferring to Powell’s team, likely in recognition that under their contract, she would be footing the bill.

“Should we reach out to Penrose for potential guidance?” SullivanStrickler employee Greg Freemyer wrote.

“Let’s wait for the request,” Paul Maggio, the chief operating officer, counseled. “If they need us, they will call.”

A separate Signal group chat entitled “Coffee_County_Forensics” shows Penrose — Powell’s associate — managing the project. In the first message on Jan. 6, 2021 at 7:35 p.m. — as police regained control of the U.S. Capitol after a deadly riot, and Congress prepared to reconvene to complete the certification of Joe Biden as president — Penrose sent the initial message to the Signal group — introducing Maggio to Scott Hall, the Georgia bail bondsman who has now pleaded guilty alongside Powell to conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties.

According to the Fulton County indictment, Hall conveyed his interest in the Coffee County expedition to Latham, the local GOP chair.

In the next message in the Signal thread, Penrose asked Maggio to take the lead on the project.

Another lawyer — someone who has not been publicly identified with either the Powell or Giuliani teams — was also in the Signal group.

A minute after Penrose delegated leadership to Maggio, Charles Bundren wrote, “We need cell numbers to identify who they are for the people at the elections HQ.”

Bundren is a Dallas-area lawyer who, with fewexceptions, has attracted little notice in the public examination of the Jan. 6 saga. In 2014, Bundren joined fellow lawyer John Eastman — one of the defendants in the Fulton County racketeering case, who is accused of leading the effort to corruptly pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate Joe Biden electors — in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the University of Texas at Austin’s use of race-conscious admissions.

More recently, Bundren represented Waldron in his suit seeking to block the House Select January 6 Committee’s efforts to obtain his cell phone records. But then Bundren stepped aside as Waldron’s lawyer and joined him as a co-plaintiff to block review of his own cell phone records. In Waldron’s lawsuit seeking to block the congressional committee, he claimed that he was investigating the 2020 election under a contract with unnamed attorneys in Collin County, Tex., which is where Bundren’s law office is located.

Posting in the “Coffee_County_Forensics” Signal group chat in the early morning hours of Jan. 7, Hall instructed the SullivanStrickler team to text Hampton and Latham before they arrived at the election office. Hall was planning to fly down to Coffee County from Atlanta, and Latham texted Maggio the address for the Douglas Municipal Airport so he could pick up Hall, according to the indictment.

Just before 3 p.m., Maggio wrote in the chat: “Collection is going well. No real issues at this point. Looking to be here until 6-7 PM this evening.”

Then, at 7:47 p.m., Maggio reported that his team had completed the assignment and were driving back to Atlanta.

After each update, Bundren replied in the thread: “Thanks.”

Bundren has not been charged in the Fulton County case.

Double-cross?

Following the Jan. 7, 2021 visit to Coffee County, a man named Doug Logan — who would later lead the so-called “audit” of the 2020 election in Arizona — was tasked with analyzing the data. As Powell’s defense team emphasized before she pleaded guilty, texts exchanged between Logan and Penrose suggest that Charles Bundren was directly overseeing the project.

“If you can draft a report for review on Friday morning with Charles Bundren that would be best — we only have until Sat to decide if we’re going to use this report to decertify the Senate runoff election — or if we hold it for a bigger movement later,” Penrose wrote in a Jan. 20, 2021 text to Logan that was obtained by Powell through discovery.

“I’m not going to brief Sidney on these findings yet,” Penrose added. “I’d ask you to do the same, so we can maintain agility on how to use it.”

Logan would later testify under oath in a deposition for a separate lawsuit that Bundren was the lawyer “that we were doing work under.” He added that Penrose told him that Bundren “was the main attorney on this work.”

More than a year after Logan’s work on the project, congressional investigators asked Giuliani if he had received a report on the Coffee County voting machines.

“Yes, sir,” Giuliani testified. “Yeah.”

Asked who gave him the report, Giuliani replied, “I don’t want to guess at it. Probably was Phil Waldron.”

As for Powell, her guilty plea means there’s a good chance she will take the witness stand and testify against her co-defendant Giuliani, who has admitted to being a consumer of the work product that came out of the Coffee County breach.

Key players in Sidney Powell’s legal drama

Charles Bundren: Dallas area attorney. He oversaw collection and analysis of Coffee County election data, according to Doug Logan.

Katherine Friess: Lawyer on the Giuliani legal team. She was involved in the examination of the Antrim County, Mich. voting machines, which led to a bogus report claiming election fraud, and then reportedly received a letter inviting Trump allies to examine voting machines in Coffee County, Ga.

Rudy Giuliani: Trump’s former personal attorney and the former mayor of New York City. A member of Giuliani's legal team was involved in examination of the Antrim County election data, and he received a report on Coffee County election data.

Preston Haliburton: Atlanta personal injury lawyer. He submitted the open records request to the Coffee County Board of Elections & Registrations while serving as “counsel of record for the Giuliani legal team.”

Scott Hall: Georgia bail bondsman. He flew to Coffee County on a private plane to accompany contractors as they collected elected data, and has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties.

Misty Hampton: Former Coffee County election director. She invited the Trump allies to visit the election office in January 2021, and is a codefendant alongside Powell, Latham, Trump and 16 others in the Georgia RICO conspiracy case.

Cathy Latham: Former Coffee County GOP chair. She spoke with Scott Graham Hall, and appears to have helped him make arrangements to travel to Coffee County to accompany contractors as they extracted election data. She is a codefendant alongside Powell, Hampton, Trump and 16 others in the Georgia RICO conspiracy case.

Doug Logan: Owner of Cyber Ninjas firm that conducted the so-called Arizona audit. He worked as an analyst on the Coffee County election data, and submitted a report on it to Charles Bundren.

Jim Penrose: Former National Security Agency official. He allegedly signed Sidney Powell’s name on the contract with SullivanStrickler, oversaw the data collection during the team’s visit to Coffee County, and directed Doug Logan to write a report on the data for attorney Charles Bundren

Sidney Powell: Lawyer who filed “Kraken” lawsuits to try to overturn the 2020 election. Her signature is on the contract with SullivanStrickler under which the Coffee County election breach was carried out.

Donald Trump: Former president accused of leading a criminal racketeering conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. Trump is the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Phil Waldron: Retired Army colonel with a background in psychological influence operations. He reportedly traveled to Antrim County, Mich., to inspect voting machines and was reportedly briefed on the plan to breach the Coffee County election system.