Last week, Sidney Powell’s and Kenneth Chesebro’s “letters of apology” to the citizens of Georgia were released pursuant to a public record request. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had insisted, as part of their plea bargains, that defendants Powell, and Chesebro submit those written apologies to the court. Now the public has gotten its first look at what contrition looks like when uttered by a criminal defendant who is being allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges and no prison time.
And it doesn’t look like much.
“I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” Powell wrote on October 19, the same day she pleaded guilty.
“I apologize to the citizens of the state of Georgia and of Fulton County for my involvement in Count 15 of the indictment,” wrote Chesebro the next day.
Nothing says “I’m really not sorry” like one sentence scrawled on a piece of lined notebook paper.
Nothing says “I’m really not sorry” like one sentence scrawled on a piece of lined notebook paper — which is exactly what Powell and Chesebro submitted. To say the apologies do not seem heartfelt is an understatement; they more closely resemble a child dragged by the ear to apologize to a teacher on the receiving end of a pea shooter.
Powell’s non-apology apology was especially notable given other indications of her lack of authentic remorse. In the days after her guilty plea, Powell’s organization “Defending the Republic” — which she founded and serves for as president — promoted articles through its Substack newsletter that characterized her guilty plea as “extorted” and obtained under pressure.
So far, four defendants in the Fulton County, Georgia case have avoided trial by pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate and testify against the remaining co-defendants. All four defendants benefitted substantially. Powell saw her felony charges reduced to six misdemeanors, bail bondsman Scott Hall pled guilty to five misdemeanors; and while attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis pled guilty to felonies, all four defendants received promises that they would serve no jail time. And the much-heralded RICO count disappeared.
All four were allowed to plead guilty under Georgia’s “first offender” law, which will enable them to have their criminal records wiped clean if they successfully complete their probationary terms. That’s a more generous deal than most defendants who plead guilty get, even those who agree to cooperate with the government and testify against their co-defendants.
Usually, prosecutors won’t guarantee the cooperating defendant a lighter sentence; they promise only to bring the extent of the defendant’s cooperation to the court’s attention at sentencing. This common practice of dangling — but not promising — reduced or even no prison time motivates a cooperating defendant to continue cooperating and, if necessary, testify truthfully against his or her co-defendants.
At trial, attorneys for the other co-defendants can always argue to the jury that the cooperator is lying to obtain a get-out-of-jail free card. But if the prosecutor and the judge believe that the cooperator has testified truthfully, a lighter sentence is likely to be imposed. Combined with a showing of remorse, a cooperating defendant has a good chance of receiving a substantially reduced sentence.
There seems to be consensus that Powell’s and Chesebro’s apologies fell short in the sincerity department.
But that’s not what happened here, since the no-prison-time sentence was promised before the testimony. So what role does a forced apology play in the Fulton County scenario?
“The contrition doesn’t have to be some poetic melody. It doesn’t have to be pages and pages,” Willis told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Sometimes you just need ‘I’m sorry.’ And if you get ‘I’m sorry,’ then we can move on and move past (it) if it’s a sincere apology.” There seems to be consensus that Powell’s and Chesebro’s apologies fell short in the sincerity department. To be fair, they pled guilty on the eve of their trial, and as it appeared the district attorney was insisting on the apology at the time of the guilty plea (instead of at sentencing), perhaps the defense team did not have time to fashion a more fulsome apology. Yet defendants Jenna Ellis and Scott Hall, who pled guilty the same week, managed to deliver more detailed and seemingly remorseful apologies; attorney Ellis even chose to read hers aloud in court. She ended her lengthy apology by saying, tearfully, “I believe in, and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse. For those failures of mine, I have taken responsibility already before the Colorado bar, who is censuring me, and I now take responsibility before this court and apologize to the people of Georgia.” “Thank you, Miss Ellis, for sharing that,” said the judge. “All too often, I don’t get to hear the perspective of the accused in this, in these cases, and so that’s appreciated.” But not everyone wants to engage on that level. If Fani Willis hoped to wring some emotional satisfaction out of the prosecutions of Powell and Chesebro, a forced apology wasn’t going to achieve that goal. Willis can force Powell and Chesebro to write down the words, but she can’t force them to believe them; and despite calls to the contrary, it’s unlikely she will undo their plea agreements on the grounds their apologies are insincere. Having given videotaped interviews to Fulton County investigators as another condition of their plea bargains, Powell and Chesebro offer testimony in Fulton County that is simply too valuable to the prosecution, and Chesebro, hoping to avoid state prosecutions, is now also cooperating with other state attorneys general who have or are looking to prosecute others who took part in “fake electors” schemes. But with respect to Powell’s and Chesebro’s contrition, Willis got exactly what she bargained for — half-hearted, limp apologies from two attorney defendants who knew that this is simply a legal transaction — nothing more, and nothing less.
Carol C. Lam
Carol C. Lam was a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California and a federal prosecutor for 18 years. She also was a Superior Court judge in San Diego County. She is a legal analyst for MSNBC. 
