Sidney Powell's apology was only 13 words, but it doesn't legally matter if she's sorry
The former Trump attorney was required to apologize. She wrote a one sentence statement, but what legally matters is that she admitted guilty.
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- Sidney Powell's 13-word apology letter does not legally matter at all.
- A former federal prosecutor told BI that requiring an apology is very rare, because it's essentially pointless.
- Powell pleaded guilty in October for her role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election results.
As part of her guilty plea in the Georgia election interference case, former Trump attorney Sidney Powell had to write an apology letter.
There wasn't much to it.
"I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County," Powell's one-sentence apology said, with her name and date signed underneath.
At just 13 words, her letter — published for the first time Thursday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution — was a pretty sorry excuse for a "sorry."
But, legally, it doesn't matter at all whether she's sorry or not.
"From the judge's perspective, he just needs to make sure that they're admitting to all the elements of the crime," attorney and former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Business Insider. "You don't have to be sorry. You just have to say that you did it. That's all that's required for a guilty plea."
"I mean, legally it has no effect," Rahmani, the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, said.
Because apologies are so pointless, Rahmani said he was surprised that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis even required one in the first place.
"It was a strange request," Rahmani said. "Very uncommon."
"I've put more than a thousand people in prison, and never once did I demand an apology," he added.
But Rahmani wasn't surprised that Powell's apology was so short.
"Because they're lawyers, right? They're going to be very careful about what they say," he said. "And you really are trained as a lawyer to give the bare minimum when you're required to do so."
Powell was the fourth defendant in the sprawling Fulton County, Georgia RICO case to plead guilty and apologize, following bail bondsman Scott Hall, ex-Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, and Georgia attorney Kenneth Chesebro.
The case accuses Donald Trump and 18 other co-defendants of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Having so many co-defendants named in the case could be beneficial to Fani Willis' case against Trump, as each time one flips on the former president, it further isolates him, BI previously reported.