Donald Trump’s name was heard this Friday in a courtroom in Atlanta, Georgia. A former campaign lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, has pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy with the former president and other defendants to change the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. Chesebro’s live-streamed confession came the day after another prominent lawyer for the former president, Sydney Powell, also pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutor Fani Willis and agreed to testify against Trump. The former president’s defense will be complicated.
This week’s two confessions came unexpectedly days before the trial of these defendants began. It’s a double triumph for prosecutor Willis. On the one hand, it tightens the siege on Trump with new incriminating testimony, in this case including those from the former president’s inner circle during his attempts to rig the election and stay in power. On the other hand, the prosecutor is avoiding disclosing in advance her prosecution strategy and the evidence before her in a trial that would have been a kind of dress rehearsal for the trial that will take place against Trump and some of the other defendants in the same case. For this reason, the prosecution has accepted generous deals that prevent the defendant from going to prison.
Trump is charged with 13 counts, including violating Georgia’s anti-crime law, conspiring to impersonate a public official, oppressing a public official to betray his oath of office and conspiring to file false documents. The fact that some of the participants in this alleged criminal organization, which is supposed to interfere in the election results, are admitting the facts is a serious blow for him in a particularly sensitive case.
Chesebro, 62, pleaded guilty this Friday to a felony count of conspiracy To false documents, one of the crimes with which the former president is accused. The indictment alleged that Chesebro coordinated and implemented a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate falsely proclaiming that Trump had won the state’s election and making themselves among the “duly elected and qualified.” Georgia voters for the presidential election explained what was indirectly the case through them. Trump lost the election in that state by fewer than 12,000 votes.
Chesebro was sentenced to five years probation, $5,000 in restitution and 100 hours of community service. In addition, he will write a letter of apology to Georgia residents and pledge to testify truthfully in future trials related to the case. His own admission of guilt was already an explicit statement against Trump, as he admitted that he had conspired with him to change the election results.
For her part, Powell, 68, pleaded guilty Thursday to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the exercise of her election duties. He won’t go to prison, but he will serve six years of probation, pay a $6,000 fine and write a letter of apology to Georgia authorities and citizens. The lawyer, a prominent protagonist in attempts to undermine the results of the 2020 elections with various conspiracy theories and with specific actions, also agreed to testify in future trials against the other defendants.
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The lawyer, along with Trump, is one of six conspirators named in the former president’s trial in Washington over interference in the 2020 election, which is expected to go to trial on March 4 next year. However, Trump’s alleged accomplices in this case have not been named nor are they currently facing charges as prosecutors preferred to focus on the former president to speed up the investigation into the case.
Last month, bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall, a lesser-known defendant, pleaded guilty to five misdemeanors, was sentenced to five years’ probation and agreed to testify at a later trial. Prosecutors accused Powell of conspiring with Hall and others to access voting equipment without authorization and of hiring the computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to send equipment to Coffee County in southern Georgia to copy software and data from voting booths and computers there .
The other 16 defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty. No date has been set for the trial. In the case of Chesebro and Powell, the hearing was scheduled to begin this Monday because they had requested to exercise their right to a speedy trial under Georgia law, which was already beginning to show cracks in the defense strategy of the various defendants. .
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