Excerpt:
Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who helped orchestrate the Trump campaign’s 2020 fake electors plot, pleaded guilty Friday in the Georgia election subversion case to being part of a conspiracy alongside former President Donald Trump and others.
The plea deal is another blow to Trump and a major victory for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who charged Trump and 18 others in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It comes one day after former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell also pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Chesebro pleaded guilty to one felony – conspiracy to commit filing false documents. Fulton County prosecutors recommended that he serve 5 years of probation and pay $5,000 in restitution, and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee imposed that sentence at Friday’s hearing.
Chesebro has also agreed to testify in future court proceedings.
As part of his plea deal, Chesebro admitted that he conspired to put forward fake GOP electors in Georgia with Trump and former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman. Giuliani and Eastman have both pleaded not guilty in the Georgia case, and now face the prospect of Chesebro taking the witness stand against them.
…
He wrote a series of memos in 2020 spelling out what the pro-Trump electors should do in their respective states. In one memo Chesebro acknowledged that he was promoting a “controversial strategy” that even the Supreme Court with its conservative supermajority would “likely” reject.
Chesebro and other Trump allies hoped then-Vice President Mike Pence would use the GOP electors to justify delaying Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory – or even throw out Biden’s lawful electors and recognize the fake GOP slates instead on January 6, 2021.
Prosecutors said in court that Chesebro acknowledged in the plea that he “created and distributed false Electoral College documents” to Trump operatives in Georgia and other states, and that he worked “in coordination with” the Trump campaign.
“The defendant provided detailed instructions to co-conspirators in Georgia and other states for creating and distributing these false documents,” prosecutor Daysha Young said at the plea hearing Friday.
Chesebro was originally charged with seven crimes, including a violation of Georgia’s RICO act, conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer. Six of the seven felony charges were dropped as part of the deal.
In addition to testifying at future trials, Chesebro agreed to write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia.
If his testimony leads to trump being in jail, it would be fucked up, but worth it. Otherwise, yeah, that’s a travesty.
I might have this wrong, but my understanding is that his plea deal only covers state prosecution, but not federal. It is possible the feds could prosecute him, but I haven’t seen nor heard if there is a side-deal to keep that from happening. Surely his lawyers would have tried to secure that, but did they succeed?
Good question.
Has he been charged at federal level yet? Would imagine that federal prosecutors prefer to negotiate deals separately, but who knows what strategic arrangements go on behind the scenes.
Even if this won’t touch the federal case, it would be worth his while, purely because state prisons are far gnarlier than federal. He’s still likely to get some credit for having eventually cooperated at state level.