ATLANTA — One of the biggest names yet in the Georgia election interference case took a plea deal Thursday, but not after doing immeasurable damage to election confidence, the Secretary of State’s Office said.

Sidney Powell was sentenced to six years probation, has to pay a $6,000 fine, and pay $2,700 in restitution to the Secretary of State’s Office. She will also have to testify truthfully against the co-defendants.

Despite the conviction, the Secretary of State’s Chief Operations Office, Gabriel Sterling, said the damage done at Powell’s hands will last for years to come.

“There was and is still massive voter fraud across the country,” Powell told a large crowd at a rally in Alpharetta just weeks after the 2020 election.

That is a stark contrast to her appearance Thursday morning inside a Fulton County courtroom where he uttered the word “guilty” when asked how she pled to the charges of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.

The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office was often the target of Powell’s accusations of voter fraud.

“The outcome’s not really a huge surprise. She’s been lying about the elections. She’s part of that grift in the election denial industry we’ve seen in Georgia. It’s a good first step to hold people accountable for their actions,” Sterling said. “It’s impossible to calculate the damage she’s done.”

Sterling said that the damage Powell did to voter confidence in Georgia’s elections will be hard to overcome.

“It undermined people’s faith in elections but undermined people’s faith in each other. There are families ripped apart by this. I don’t know how you measure that,” Sterling said.

Powell was supposed to go to trial alongside co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro on Monday. As of right now, he will stand trial alone after ABC News reported that he rejected a plea deal from the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.

When asked for reaction to Powell’s guilty plea on Thursday, senior adviser to Gov. Brian Kemp, Cody Hall, said it “couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”

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