A lawyer indicted in Georgia alongside former President Donald Trump will be the first in the multi-defendant criminal case to stand trial for allegedly conspiring to subvert the 2020 election.
Jury selection begins Friday for Kenneth Chesebro, pronounced “Chez-bro,” an attorney who allegedly schemed with Trump and 17 others to undo his 2020 election defeat by President Joe Biden, according to prosecutors with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis‘s office.
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Chesebro, 62, is accused of concocting a plan to submit a slate of so-called fake electors from closely contested states won by Biden. He is the first defendant to face trial because he demanded a speedy trial, a component of the 6th Amendment and Georgia criminal code that allows for the trial to commence within a limited window of time.
Another former Trump attorney, Sidney Powell, was set to stand trial with Chesebro but pleaded guilty Thursday to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit interference with performance of election duties. In exchange, prosecutors lowered her counts to misdemeanors and dismissed her racketeering charge. She must also submit a written apology letter to the state of Georgia and “testify truthfully about any defendants,” presiding Judge Scott McAfee said.
Powell, 68, had also filed for a speedy trial, which threw a wrench in Chesebro’s initial request to be tried alone in the case. McAfee sided with Willis’s request to have them tried together during a hearing in September.
“It’s definitely good for Chesebro because they were going to be tried together even though they were different tentacles of the same conspiracy alleged,” Andrew Lieb of Lieb at Law told the Washington Examiner, noting it was going to “conflate the jury on guilt” if they were tried jointly.
However, Lieb underscored that McAfee just dealt a blow to Chesebro Wednesday when he ruled several emails the defendant sought to shield from evidence are admissible under the crime-fraud exception, a standard by which probable cause was established that a lawyer’s advice was used in furtherance of a crime.
The series of setbacks handed to defendants in the pretrial phase could have trickling effects on Trump’s eventual trial, which has yet to be scheduled for him and 16 others by the judge, according to Lieb, in part because every defendant including Trump will have their trials livestreamed publicly, making it by far the most publicized of Trump’s four indictments.
“The damning evidence from the trial is going to be definitely bad for Trump, because unlike Chesebro, Trump doesn’t get to put up a defense and poke holes in it,” Lieb said, noting it could lead to a “one-sided conversation in the media.”
The evidence McAfee held admissible for Chesebro’s trial involves alleged emails between fellow attorney and co-defendant John Eastman on Dec. 24, 2020, indicating Chesebro was aware of the political calculus behind dozens of Trump campaign lawsuits leveraging interest among some GOP lawmakers who sought to delay certification of the Electoral College outcome on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I particularly agree that getting this on file gives more ammo to the justices fighting for the court to intervene,” Chesebro allegedly wrote in a response to Eastman in reference to a Supreme Court petition, according to email copies obtained by the New York Times. “I think the odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way,” Chesebro allegedly said.
A batch of 450 Fulton County residents will report for jury duty at the Fulton County Courthouse Friday to begin the tedious procedure for seating an impartial, 12-person jury for a trial expected to last up to five months, McAfee has said.
“We’re going to be making the attempt to have this jury sworn by the deadline of Nov. 5,” McAfee said during a recent pretrial hearing that saw attorneys on both sides debating how detailed the questionnaires should be to vet out potential bias among prospective jurors due to the high-profile nature of the case.
A jury must be sworn in by the end of the speedy trial window, which is Nov. 5, or else the charges against him will be dropped, though prosecutors could attempt to appeal any dismissal.
Also hanging over Chesebro’s head is his status as unindicted “Co-Conspirator 5,” one of two criminal indictments levied by special counsel Jack Smith in the Justice Department’s 2020 election subversion case against Trump.
The Fulton County indictment alleges Chesebro and other defendants helped file Georgia’s GOP slate of electors despite knowing it contained false statements such as “the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Georgia” who “do hereby certify” that Trump won Georgia.
Chesebro’s counsel has pushed back on accusations of allegedly false statements, contesting that the electors didn’t actually intend to claim that they “hereby certifi[ed]” the vote count for Trump because they made public statements they were merely trying to procure a backup slate of electors in case Trump could somehow overcome his election defeat in court.
“Nothing about Mr. Chesebro’s conduct falls outside the bounds of what lawyers do on a daily basis; researching the law in order to find solutions that address their clients particularized needs,” they wrote in one filing.
Chesebro has rejected a plea deal offer from Willis’s team, according to NBC News. One of Chesebro’s attorneys, Scott Grubman, declined to comment to the Washington Examiner.
Ahead of Powell’s guilty plea, some legal analysts suggested the early Oct. 23 trial would give Trump and other defendants to be tried after Chesebro a slight edge by previewing prosecutors’ arguments well before his trial ever took place. Still, Powell’s potential testimony, on top of more than 150 witnesses prosecutors can call, isn’t a desirable prospect for defendants.
While it remains to be seen whether Powell will be used as a witness, former federal prosecutor Cynthia Alksne suggested Powell’s history of making frivolous election fraud claims could harm her credibility.
“John Dean she is not,” Alksne posted to X, referring to the attorney whose testimony aided the case for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.
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Lieb, however, said there’s a good chance prosecutors wouldn’t divulge their complete strategy to convict Trump when he stands trial as early as next year.
“What they’re gonna get out of it is how they structure the case, how they present the evidence, how they set traps. It’s more tactical lawyering that I would be watching for, how the team works, as opposed to the specific evidence.”
