I don’t know when she went crazy but Sidney Powell definitely lost her mind at some point. For a long time, she appeared to be a competent attorney, serving not only as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Justice Department but also as a private attorney to high-profile clients, such as executives at Enron. But among a long list of deranged attorneys that served Donald Trump’s interests in the aftermath of the 2020 election, she was the most deranged, and that’s an accomplishment considering she had to compete with folks like Lin Wood, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani.

She was indicted as part of the sprawling racketeering case brought by Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis. For some reason, she exercised her right to a speedy trial. And, then, after pleading not-guilty and losing a series of motions to dismiss the case, she turned around on Thursday and pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts.

Former Donald Trump attorney Sidney Powell has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election subversion case, one day before her trial was set to start.

Fulton County prosecutors are recommending a sentence of six years probation. Powell will also be required to testify at future trials and write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia.

As part of her guilty plea, Powell is admitting her role in the January 2021 breach of election systems in rural Coffee County, Georgia. With the help of local GOP officials, a group of Trump supporters accessed and copied information from the county’s election systems in hopes of somehow proving that the election was rigged against Trump.

She’s going to pay some fines, too, but this is really a slap on the wrist. She avoids both prison and a felony conviction. And that’s really the point for Willis, because there are 18 other defendants in the case, only one of which has pleaded guilty. Those defendants can continue on to trial where they’ll be risking major time in the slammer, or they can look to Powell’s example. In exchange for admitting her role and agreeing to testify for the prosecution, she can put this whole thing largely behind her. Who wouldn’t take that deal?

And that’s bad news for a certain disgraced ex-president because he now has to contend with Powell spilling the beans. You might remember that at the seventh public hearing of the House Select Committee investigating January 6, they went into great detail about a meeting in the White House that took place on December 18, 2020.

It started with “Sidney Powell, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne and former national security adviser Michael Flynn access[ing] the White House with the help of a junior staffer” and briefly getting a private meeting with President Trump before his legal team learned what was going on. Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified that the group was trying to convince Trump that “Venezuela had meddled with the election and that Nest brand thermostats hooked up to the internet were changing votes.” At one point, Trump suggested naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate allegations of election fraud.

But the White House lawyers pushed back.

The outside group of Trump’s advisors repeatedly accused the White House team of being too weak to further contest the election results.

“I would categorically describe it as: ‘You guys aren’t tough enough,’ ” former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a video clip of testimony.

“What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts,” said Herschman, and recalled an exchange with Powell about the integrity of judges who had ruled on the Trump team’s legal challenges.

“She says, ‘Well, the judges are corrupt,’ ” he recounted. “I’m like — ‘Every one? Every single case in the country you guys lost? Every one of them is corrupt? Even the ones we appointed?’ I’m being nice, I was much more harsh to her.”

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone testified that he spoke out and was “vehemently opposed” to Powell and “didn’t think she should be appointed anything.” And she wasn’t.

But she also wasn’t done acting crazy. On January 7, 2021, the day after the insurrection at the Capitol, a Powell-directed team entered a Coffee County, Georgia election office and “stole data, including ballot images, voting equipment software and personal voter information.”

Who directed her to do that? She’ll now have to tell us, on the stand.

And it’s also bad news for Trump’s federal case.

John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, called Powell’s plea a “significant win” for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

“This is somebody who was at ground zero of these allegations and a lawyer who is pleading guilty,” he said. “This is very significant.”

Fishwick also said Powell’s plea is helpful to Jack Smith, the Justice Department’s special counsel.

Powell is referenced, though not by name, as one of six unindicted co-conspirators in Smith’s federal case charging Trump with plotting to overturn the election. That indictment notes how Trump had privately acknowledged to others that Powell’s unfounded claims of election fraud were “crazy,” yet nonetheless he promoted and embraced a lawsuit that Powell filed against the state of Georgia that included what prosecutors said were “far-fetched” and baseless assertions.

The walls are closing in, and we should see some more guilty pleas soon.