President Trump once allegedly called attorney Sidney Powell’s plan to reverse the results of the 2020 election “crazy,” but the embattled attorney could now be his best hope to avoid seeing the inside of a Georgia prison.

Ms. Powell’s potential utility to the 45th president surfaced with the disclosure of parts of two “proffer videos,” conversations between prosecutors and defendants who have pleaded guilty and agreed to work with the government. The first video featured another attorney, Jenna Ellis. The second stars Ms. Powell, who once launched a battery of unsuccessful lawsuits and promised to “release the Kraken” in efforts to uncover voter fraud. 

The footage, first reported by ABC News, is meant to capture what cooperating defendants like Ellis and Ms. Powell have to share with the government. In exchange for turning state’s witness and promising to testify “truthfully,” they both avoided jail time. The videos will be turned over to the defense as evidence. 

In the video of Ms. Powell, she portrays herself and the former president as genuinely convinced that he won the 2020 election. That unwavering conviction will be of great interest to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, as it could counter efforts by the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, to prove that Mr. Trump knew he lost, but nevertheless persisted in illegal efforts to reverse the result. 

At stake is a bedrock principle of the common law, captured in the Latin as actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means, “a guilty act does not make one guilty unless his mind is guilty.” Lawyers use the phrase mens rea for short. That translates to “guilty mind,” and means that to secure a prosecution, the government must show that a defendant possessed the requisite intent. The Supreme Court explains that “an injury is criminal only if inflicted knowingly.”

Now Ms. Powell tells prosecutors that both she and the president she served, President Trump, believe “instincts told him he had been defrauded, that the election was a big fraud.” She cites his “general instincts that something wasn’t right here” and adds, “I didn’t think he had lost. I saw an avenue pursuant to which, if I was right, he would remain president.”

After Ms. Powell’s plea deal was announced, Mr. Trump took to Truth Social to assert, “MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS.” She tells a different story, though, one of regular contact and of Mr. Trump inquiring “where things were in terms of finding fraud.” She also relates that Mr. Trump “was specifically willing to appoint” her as a “special counsel” overseeing an investigation of voter fraud. 

That did not come to pass, nor did the suggestion, made in the same now notorious Oval Office meeting, that the administration seize voting machines in, as Ms. Powell puts it, “four or five cities” where “statistical anomalies” occurred. She also relates that “there was a big shouting match” in which Mayor Giuliani “called me every name in the book.” Mr. Giuliani, of course, is also a defendant in the Georgia case and, unlike Ms Powell, has not reached a plea agreement.

If Ms. Powell and Mr. Trump were working closely together, the former president’s attorneys could plausibly portray her as a reliable barometer for his state of mind in regard to the results of the election. At least from the footage currently available, it appears as if both he and Ms. Powell were of the same mind — that Mr. Trump, and not President Biden, won the election. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith tells a different story in his federal indictment of Mr. Trump, where Ms. Powell appears as co-conspirator 3. There he writes that the former president rejected her “far-fetched public claims regarding the voting machine company in private with advisors” and said she “sounded crazy.” These claims, as all others, need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury.  

Ms. Powell, though, has now, under oath, told Ms. Willis’s office that her impression is that Mr. Trump took her seriously, and that they were of common mind when it came to the assessment that the election was materially marred by fraud. To secure a conviction of Mr. Trump, both Ms. Willis and Mr. Smith will have to persuade a jury that there was daylight between him and Ms. Powell.