FILE — Sidney Powell, an attorney for former President Donald Trump, leaves the federal court in Washington, June 24, 2021 (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File).
Sidney Powell has done it again.
The pro-Donald Trump attorney fended off the second challenge to her professional license on Friday, defeating an effort launched by the Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline over her guilty pleas in the racketeering (RICO) case out of Fulton County, Georgia.
In October 2023, Powell exhausted efforts to have the charges against her dismissed at the trial court level. She eventually pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors based on her litigation to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the Peach State. The conservative lawyer, who is licensed in Texas, was subsequently sentenced to one year of probation — set to run consecutively, or, one after another — on each count of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with election administration.
In June 2024, the standing oversight committee, which is a segment of the State Bar of Texas, filed the charges against Powell — citing her six-year sentence on those misdemeanor counts and requesting “compulsory discipline.” Such discipline, under Lone Star State rules for attorneys, could have included suspension of Powell’s license through the term of her probation or even disbarment.
After a Friday morning hearing in Austin, however, the Board of Disciplinary Appeals ruled that an election-related misdemeanor in Georgia does not rise to the level of an “intentional and serious crime” under the relevant rules, according to a report by Bloomberg Law.
Powell savaged the disciplinary efforts after her victory, calling the case “the epitome of lawfare that shouldn’t be allowed in this country.”
“Lawyers have to be able to stand up and represent unpopular cases,” she added.
The bar previously tried to discipline Powell over several lawsuits she filed in November 2020 that sought “to prevent the certification of election results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.”
That first case lasted just over two years. Thrown out at the district court level, disciplinary authorities appealed but were again rebuked — by a 3-person panel of Democrat-appointed judges in Dallas.
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In April 2024, the appeals court found bar authorities could not prove their case because they relied on a poorly constructed record. And when authorities later tried to resuscitate their “scattershot” case, those efforts fell just as flat because they “generally referenced” four distinct exhibits that were nowhere to be found, the court ruled.
Powell had moved to have the second set of charges against her dismissed — but the board opted to decide the case on the merits.
Representing the Dallas-based lawyer was fellow attorney Bob Holmes, who argued that his client’s actions concerning voting data in Georgia were neither intentional nor serious.
And, in the end, the merits favored the lawyer who famously described her pro-Trump election-focused lawsuits as “Kraken”-like.
The board’s formal ruling has yet to be released as of this writing but the decision was reportedly announced from the bench.
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Still, the triumph comes with something of a blemish.
“For the bar that I’ve devoted more than 45 years of practice to come against me nonstop for four years now is extremely disheartening and painful and it’s been very expensive and time-consuming and unjust,” Powell said after the hearing, according to Bloomberg Law reporter Ryan Autullo.
Aside from the time and money spent defending against the bar’s charges, the attorney said her practice has suffered as well.
“Nobody’s calling someone who has been besieged as I’ve been,” Powell said.
