Scott Hall leaves the courtroom with his attorney in Fulton, Georgia, September 29, 2023 (screenshot during a video conference). POOL / VIA Portal
He is the first of former US President Donald Trump’s eighteen co-defendants to be found guilty in the case of alleged unlawful attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.
Scott Hall, 59, who initially faced seven charges, pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiracy to interfere with election duties during a hearing before Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee on Friday, September 29th.
As part of a deal with prosecutors, he was sentenced to five years in prison, a $5,000 fine and two hundred hours of community service. He also promised to write an apology letter to Georgia voters and testify at the other defendants’ upcoming trials, which could be a major win for Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis.
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A violation that lasted several weeks
The 98-page indictment describes Mr. Hall as an associate of David Bossie, a longtime adviser to Donald Trump. Authorities allege Scott Hall and his co-defendants conspired to provide others with “unlawful access to secure voting machines and voter data” in Coffee County in January 2021.
The security breach in the county, about 180 miles (300 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta, was among the first known attempts to access voting systems by allies of Mr. Trump who were looking for evidence to support their baseless claims that the equipment had been used to rig the vote in the presidential election. Burglaries quickly followed in three Michigan counties involving some of the same people, and then in a western Colorado county that Donald Trump won decisively.
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According to authorities, the breach began on January 7, 2021, the day after the violent attack on the Capitol in Washington, and continued for several weeks.
No date set for Donald Trump yet
In this case, not all co-defendants will be tried at the same time. Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro – both lawyers – called for a speedy trial that will begin on October 23rd. Ms. Powell is accused of hiring and paying a team of computer experts to copy voting machine data and software without authorization. Mr. Chesebro is accused of trying to get sixteen Georgia Republicans to sign a certificate falsely declaring that Mr. Trump won the election by declaring himself among the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors State has declared.
No dates have yet been set for the sixteen other defendants, including Mr. Trump and his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Donald Trump, the favorite in the Republican primary, is calling his legal troubles “election interference” at the behest of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration in a bid to disqualify him from the 2024 race for the White House.
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Unlike this sprawling Georgia trial, the federal case being investigated by special prosecutor Jack Smith over alleged illegal attempts to overturn the results of the vote won by Joe Biden targets just one defendant: Donald Trump. According to Jack Smith, the trial in federal court in Washington is scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024 and is expected to last about four weeks. In Georgia, prosecutors expect the trial to last four months.