Former President Donald Trump‘s co-defendants in the sweeping Fulton County, Georgia, racketeering case keep negotiating deals with prosecutors, agreements that not only keep them out of jail but may save their future careers.
Four of the 19 co-defendants in the case have come to the table with prosecutors from Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis‘s office to plead guilty to reduced charges that at worst require them to pay fines but at most keep them away from the bedbug-infested Fulton County jail.
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The three most recent defendants to enter plea deals with prosecutors all have one thing in common, which is their status as career attorneys who aided Trump’s election challenge strategies after he lost the 2020 election.
“It is certainly interesting that three out of the four that pled guilty are lawyers,” Philip Holloway, an Atlanta-based attorney for more than two decades, told the Washington Examiner.
“Lawyers perhaps are more keenly aware of the risk associated with a jury trial. And they also have possibly more to lose, and by that, I’m referring to their law licenses,” Holloway added.
Attorney Jenna Ellis became the latest to plead guilty on Tuesday before presiding Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee.
Her lawyers agreed with prosecutors that the offense she admitted to, participating in an effort to make false statements to Georgia lawmakers about election fraud, wasn’t a “crime of moral turpitude.” That agreement was also part of the guilty pleas by other Trump-affiliated lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro and could help them avoid disbarment, legal experts told the Washington Examiner.
“It is a violation of the rules of professional conduct to be convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude where the underlying conduct relates to the practice of law look up,” Atlanta-based attorney Jeff Brickman told the Washington Examiner, citing the State Bar of Georgia disciplinary process.
Similar language exists in disciplinary literature about the Colorado Bar Association, where Ellis is licensed to practice, as well as the State Bar of Texas and the State Bar of California, where Powell and Chesebro are licensed, respectively.
During her statement to McAfee Tuesday, Ellis referenced her previous admission to misrepresenting claims of election fraud in a deal she reached with Colorado authorities who discipline lawyers for misconduct.
Additionally, Ellis’s guilty plea doesn’t block future complaints levied against her, and her admission still triggers a minimum review by Colorado Attorney Regulation Counsel Jessica Yates. Ellis must report the conviction to Yates’s office within 14 days, according to Colorado Newsline.
Holloway said that getting prosecutors to agree on the record that their crimes weren’t moral turpitude “helps” their bid to keep their law license but underscored it’s “not binding on any agency that’s considering an attorney discipline matter.”
Brickman and Holloway both indicated they think more of Trump’s co-defendants would enter plea agreements with Willis’s team, as both noted that criminal prosecutors are always seeking to negotiate agreements in multidefendant cases.
Brickman said he thinks more defendants would plead out of the case because of the potential for a so-called trial tax, or a worse sentence for forcing prosecutors to go to a trial. “The state’s recommendation is going to be much more harsh following a conviction than it is on an early plea,” he added.
In exchange for their plea, the defendants who have made agreements so far are facing at least five years of probation, have been required to pay fines, and have sworn to provide their truthful testimony at a later trial if called by the prosecution.
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The first defendant to plead guilty was Atlanta-based bail bondsman Scott Hall, who was among a group of people who breached a Coffee County election office on Jan. 7, 2021.
Rather than the seven felonies he previously faced, Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.
