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Could Trump's six alleged co-conspirators face charges in Georgia? [1]
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Date: 2023-08-03
The six unnamed co-conspirators listed in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s latest indictment of Donald Trump, relating to alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, could face trouble in the Peach State.
The grand jury, acting under Smith’s guidance, chose to indict only Trump, apparently to expedite bringing the former president to trial, but said that there were six co-conspirators linked to the plot to keep Trump in office.
Slate explained that “a trial with multiple defendants inevitably slows it down with pretrial motions from each, cross-examination of government witnesses by each defendants’ lawyers, and additional witnesses put on by each defendant.”
However, Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek indictments this month from a grand jury in Atlanta. The New York Times reported that nearly 20 people have been warned that they could face charges. Among those targeted are some of the co-conspirators listed in the indictment prepared by Smith’s team.
RELATED STORY: No, Republicans, Trump’s indictment isn’t about free speech
The indictment listed six co-conspirators, but did not identify them by name. A comparison of details in the indictment with previous media reports has enabled reporters to identify them by name:
Co-conspirator 1: Rudy Giuliani, lawyer;
Co-conspirator 2: John Eastman, lawyer;
Co-conspirator 3: Sidney Powell, lawyer;
Co-conspirator 4: Jeffrey Clark, former Justice Department official;
Co-conspirator 5: Kenneth Chesebro, lawyer;
Co-conspirator 6: was described as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” The New York Times has subsequently identified this person as Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser to the 2020 Trump campaign.
Trump
The latest Trump indictment does raise questions as to whether Willis will indict Trump, since his role in interfering in Georgia’s election is also covered in Smith’s federal indictment.
The indictment does mention the phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, in which Trump was recorded urging Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the 11,780 votes needed to overturn Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state.
Might Willis find it superfluous to cover the same ground as Smith, and perhaps less troublesome to instead focus on indicting Trump’s allies and co-conspirators?
In a July 23 story, The New York Times had this to say about the broad net cast by Willis’ investigation:
The Trump aides and allies whose conduct has been closely scrutinized in the inquiry include Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer; Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; John Eastman, a legal architect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to stay in power; and Jeffrey Clark, a former high-ranking official at the Department of Justice who sought to intervene in Georgia after the 2020 election. … The conduct of a number of lawyers who advised Mr. Trump in the aftermath of the election has also come under close scrutiny in Georgia, including Mr. Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis.
Meadows was not listed as an identifiable co-conspirator in Smith’s indictment—an indication that he may be cooperating with federal prosecutors.
RELATED STORY: What do we need to know about the latest Trump indictment?
Ahead of Tuesday’s federal indictment of Trump, the Associated Press wrote:
Details of the Georgia investigation that have become public have fed speculation that Willis, a Democrat, is building a case under the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which would allow her to charge numerous people in a potentially wide-ranging scheme.
Giuliani was subpoenaed to appear before the special grand jury convened by Willis to issue a report on efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and make recommendations about indictments for a regular grand jury. He testified to the special grand jury on Aug. 17, 2022.
Giuliani and Trump
As The Washington Post wrote at the time:
In the subpoena, Willis’s team cited Giuliani’s comments before a Georgia Senate hearing in which he provided testimony and evidence “purporting to demonstrate the existence of election fraud in multiple Georgia counties during the administration of the November 2020 election. […] During those meetings, Giuliani claimed illegal ballots had been surreptitiously stashed in suitcases under a tabulation table and that there was rampant underage voting in addition to security problems with voting machines and evidence of dead people voting. Those claims were investigated by state officials and largely debunked.
Giuliani also recently conceded that he made “false” statements about two Atlanta election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. He accused both of engaging in election fraud. They have sued him for defamation.
Eastman and Giuliani
Eastman testified before Willis’ special grand jury on Aug. 31, 2022. Eastman’s attorneys said he asserted “attorney-client privilege and the constitutional right to remain silent where appropriate,” CNN reported.
CNN added that Willis’ interest in Eastman was related to his testimony before Georgia lawmakers in December 2020. According to court filings, Eastman “advised lawmakers that they had both the lawful authority and a ‘duty’ to replace the Democratic Party’s slate of presidential electors,” and made unfounded claims of voter fraud.
Powell
In Smith’s latest indictment of Trump, ”Co-Conspirator 3,” who has subsequently been identified as Powell, is said to have made far-fetched public claims about massive election fraud involving a voting machine company’s software and hardware—claims that Trump privately told advisers were unsupported and sounded “crazy.”
Powell was supposed to testify before the Fulton County special grand jury, but she didn’t appear, according to coverage last month from Atlanta’s 11 Alive.
The Fulton County DA’s Office said in a court filing that Powell and others attended a meeting hosted by attorney L. Lin Wood at a South Carolina plantation “for the purpose of exploring options to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.” Wood told MSNBC in an interview that Powell asked him to find plaintiffs for potential Georgia election lawsuits. She continued to file lawsuits in battleground states even after being dropped by the Trump campaign. Powell was also involved in the alleged election data breach in Coffee County, Georgia, according to a court filing seeking her testimony. Powell coordinated with Atlanta-based forensic data firm SullivanStrickler to allegedly copy the data. [...] Powell allegedly took part in similar efforts in Nevada and Michigan, according to Fulton County court documents.
As for Clark, the former Justice Department official, The New York Times reported in July that Willis sought to have Clark testify to the special grand jury, but the Justice Department blocked her efforts.
Clark After the 2020 election, Mr. Clark tried to circumvent the Justice Department’s leadership and made false claims in a draft letter to Georgia lawmakers about the department’s findings regarding the election results. In the letter, he also urged the legislature to take steps to aid Mr. Trump in his efforts to stay in power. More senior Justice Department officials ultimately blocked him from sending the letter; Mr. Clark also failed in his efforts to replace the acting U.S. attorney general in the waning days of the Trump administration.
Chesebro also fought the subpoena to testify before the special grand jury, citing attorney-client privilege, but ultimately did so, according to Newsweek.
11 Alive wrote:
Fulton County prosecutors allege that Chesebro worked with the leadership of the Georgia Republican Party, including then-chairman David Shafer, to have 16 Republicans meet at the Georgia State Capitol to cast Electoral College ballots falsely claiming that Trump won the election. Chesebro worked directly with Giuliani as part of the plan, according to a Fulton County court filing seeking Chesebro’s testimony before a special purpose grand jury.
Meanwhile, Epshteyn testified before Willis’ special grand jury on Sept. 22, 2022, according to The New York Times, which said at the time it was not clear whether Epshteyn was a target of the investigation or a witness.
Epshteyn [Willis] is examining Republicans who assembled a bogus slate of electors in an effort to thwart the outcome of the popular vote in Georgia. Mr. Epshteyn played a leading role in that effort. In filings earlier this year that sought to compel his testimony, Ms. Willis’s office said that Mr. Epshteyn “possesses unique knowledge concerning the logistics, planning, and execution of efforts by the Trump Campaign to submit false certificates of vote to former Vice President Michael Pence and others.” Her office highlighted an interview that Mr. Epshteyn did with MSNBC in January, when he said he was “part of the process, to make sure there were alternate electors for when, as we hoped, the challenges to the seated electors would be heard and would be successful.”
If any of the co-conspirators are indicted and convicted in Fulton County, they would face the prospect of serving time in a Georgia state prison rather than Club Fed. It’s worth nothing that presidential pardon power only applies to federal convictions, not state ones. In May, POLITICO wrote that Georgia’s pardon program has stringent eligibility requirements. A person could only apply for a pardon to the five-member Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles after being indicted and convicted—and only after five additional years have passed since completion of the sentence. Georgia is one of the few states that doesn’t allow its governor to commute prison sentences, though the governor does appoint members of the parole board. However, even Georgia’s parole board has very restrictive limits as to its power to commute sentences. The best hope for Trump or other potential defendants would be to have Willis removed from the case and the special grand jury’s report be quashed—and Trump has tried just that. Such efforts have so far been slapped down by Georgia judges, but a hearing Aug. 10 is the latest step in that journey, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Friday. Legal observers consider Trump’s motion a long shot, but the hearing comes as Willis could be on the verge of asking a recently seated grand jury to hand up an indictments. All signs point to the former president being charged. [...] [Trump’s filing] was initially filed before the Georgia Supreme Court, but the court unanimously declined to hear itand indicated that, if it had agreed to do so, the motion would have failed. Trump’s legal team then filed a similar motion in Fulton Superior Court. In May, Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation to create an oversight commission that would have the power to remove local district attorneys from their jobs, CNN reported.
CNN wrote that In earlier testimony before the Judiciary Committee of the Georgia Senate, Willis “described the bill as racist and retaliatory.”
However, the commission will have little impact on this case.
“Under the law, the commission will not be able to receive complaints before October 1 and will not be able to receive complaints about misconduct that happened before that date unless it is related to “a continuous pattern of conduct that continues beyond that date.”
So it’s entirely possible that Willis could indict some of the co-conspirators listed in Trump’s latest federal indictment. Could the prospect of serving time in a Georgia state prison loosen some tongues?
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