2023-10-20 22:30:00
A lawyer for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, Kenneth Chesebro, pleaded guilty Friday to illicit maneuvers to reverse the results of the election, the second in 24 hours, undermining the former US president’s line of defense.
The busy legal week ends particularly badly for Donald Trump: on Monday ordered media silence on his future federal trial in Washington for his actions during the 2020 election, he was fined on Friday by a judge in New York for violation of its injunctions.
Kenneth Chesebro, 62, targeted by seven counts, pleaded guilty to the single count of forgery, during a hearing in Atlanta, capital of the state of Georgia (southeast).
He was sentenced to five years in prison, $5,000 in compensation to Georgia, 100 hours of community service and delivered a letter of apology to the voters of that state.
He is essentially accused of having written and sent notes with a view to replacing the electoral votes obtained in 2020 in Georgia by Democrat Joe Biden with those of the outgoing Republican president, a maneuver at the heart of the alleged plot.
A total of 19 defendants, including Donald Trump and his former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, are named in the indictment issued on August 14 in Fulton County Court, notably under a Georgia crime law in an organized gang used by prosecutor Fani Willis.
Mr. Chesebro will have to, in exchange for the dropping of the six other charges, testify at the future trials of the other defendants, on a date still undetermined.
“Dominos”
Conservative lawyer Sidney Powell, 68, who was scheduled to stand trial with him in a now-canceled trial that began Monday, pleaded guilty Thursday to six counts of conspiracy to interfere with election duties.
Sentenced to six years in prison, a $6,000 fine and $2,700 in compensation, this former federal prosecutor was mainly involved in an intrusion into an electoral center in Georgia to illegally copy computer data.
The indictment also mentions his participation in a meeting at the White House on December 18, 2020 in the presence of Messrs. Trump and Giuliani on strategies to influence the outcome of the presidential vote “including the seizure of election materials.”
“The dominoes are starting to fall,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti commented on social networks after the agreement reached by Kenneth Chesebro, which came as the registration of 450 potential jurors for his trial had just begun.
“Trump plans to take the blame on the lawyers, but now it will be prosecution witnesses who point the finger at him,” he added.
In addition to Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell who had called for a speedy judgment, a first defendant, Scott Hall, already pleaded guilty on September 29.
“The agreement with Chesebro is a big blow for Fani Willis, but perhaps even more for Jack Smith,” former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote on social networks in reference to the special prosecutor who is investigating a federal procedure for alleged attempts illicit to obtain the reversal of the results of the 2020 vote in seven key states.
The Trump campaign “attempted the fake electorate scam in several states and Chesebro was the architect,” she points out.
Unlike the sprawling procedure in Georgia, the case investigated at the federal level by special prosecutor Jack Smith targets a single defendant: Donald Trump.
He will also be tried in this case in federal court in Washington starting March 4. The judge in that trial, Tanya Chutkan, on October 16 barred him and all parties from any public comments aimed at prosecutors, court staff, and witnesses.
The former president, favorite in the Republican primaries, denounces his legal troubles as so much “electoral interference” at the instigation of the Biden administration to exclude him from the race for the White House in 2024.
20/10/2023 22:28:26 –
Washington (AFP) –
© 2023 AFP
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