If you read my post about Donald Trump demanding that the debates cease and all the presidential contenders unite behind him, then you know that he was plenty wigged out yesterday. Kenneth Chesebro pleading guilty to the felony charge of conspiring to commit the filing of false documents threw a total monkey wrench into Trump’s defense in two, count ’em, two of his cases. That is not good. It’s the equivalent of having to retool an assembly line. Trump had his plausible deniability defense put together, that he was only acting on advice of counsel, can’t blame a guy for that, right? And now Chesebro pleads guilty and Trump and his lawyers have to figure out what to do next. New York Times:
But Mr. Chesebro’s deal could present a more serious threat to Mr. Trump than the others given that he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy count that involved both the former president and some of his closest allies.
Mr. Chesebro also maintained an extensive correspondence with other pro-Trump lawyers charged in the case and played a central role in one of Mr. Trump’s chief plans to stay in office: a scheme to create slates of pro-Trump electors in states like Georgia, which Mr. Trump had actually lost.
A New York lawyer with an Ivy League pedigree, Mr. Chesebro was the first of several lawyers involved in the so-called fake elector scheme to have decided to turn state’s evidence in either of the two election interference cases Mr. Trump is facing. (While Ms. Powell filed lawsuits making preposterous claims that the election had been rigged against Mr. Trump, she had no direct role in creating fake electors.)
The electors scheme became a vital part of the end game strategy pursued by Mr. Trump as he and his allies sought to find a way to block or delay congressional certification of his Electoral College defeat. When Mr. Trump directed his supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Chesebro was among them, accompanying the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the Capitol grounds. (Mr. Chesebro does not appear to have illegally entered the Capitol as the march turned into a riot.)
Nice to know that Chesebro stopped at actual breaking and entering a government facility. But the others did not. And certainly Chesebro’s discussions with Alex Jones and other members of Trump’s inner circle who were also cobbling together the conspiracy theory of the stolen election on their end will prove invaluable. And that’s what Trump fears. And Trump is not alone in fearing this. Chesebro will take down more people than Trump.
If and when Mr. Chesebro takes the stand in Georgia, he could give an insider’s perspective not only on the legal advice he provided to Mr. Trump, but also on another important issue: the roles that other lawyers, including John Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani, played in the fake elector scheme.
Moreover, having already put in writing that some of Mr. Trump’s postelection legal maneuvers were feints of a sort undertaken for political ends, Mr. Chesebro might also be able to undermine one of the defenses that the former president could use in both of the election prosecutions.
If Mr. Chesebro were to testify that Mr. Trump’s lawsuits challenging his loss were not designed to win, but merely as ploys to sow doubt about the election, it could cut against Mr. Trump’s possible plan to use a so-called advice of counsel defense. That strategy involves blaming one’s lawyers for giving bad advice.
And it’s a little tough to prove that they were giving “bad” advice, when in fact the advice they were giving was deliberately self-serving and put together for the purposes of delay.
Mr. Smith’s indictment also mentioned a memo that Mr. Chesebro wrote in December 2020 as Mr. Trump and his legal team were scrambling for ways to overturn his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. In the memo, Mr. Chesebro acknowledged that the fake elector plan was “a bold, controversial strategy” that the Supreme Court was “likely” to reject.
But much like in the email he would send around that Christmas, Mr. Chesebro said the plan had value even if the Supreme Court shot it down. Creating the fake electors would achieve two goals, the memo said. They would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and “buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”
Chesebro appears in Jack Smith’s federal election case as unindicted Co-Conspirator 5, a lawyer who helped to craft and implement “a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification process.” Now here’s how things may go: Jack Smith may charge Chesebro, or he may subpoena him to testify against Trump. And if he does the latter, then Chesebro could invoke the Fifth Amendment.
But, here’s where it gets good: any statements that Chesebro would give on the stand in Georgia would be fair game for Jack Smith and his prosecutors to use, if and when they do decide to bring charges against Chesebro.
And it gets better. Chuck Rosenberg, who’s a senior FBI official and former U.S. attorney says, “Cheseboro and Powell are both unindicted co-conspirators in a pending federal indictment. That could make it hard for them to get on the stand in Georgia because truthful answers under oath in that jurisdiction could expose them to criminal liability in the federal case.”
All of this was undoubtedly explained to Trump. That’s why he started shaking in his golf shoes and calling for the nomination process to result in a coronation of him as the undisputed 2024 GOP candidate for president of the United States, and right now. That’s an outlandish request to make, or even infer, but everything about Trump in the political arena has been outlandish and iconoclastic, so this behavior is right on point.
Chesebro’s guilty plea Friday turned the heat up in the Trump legal kitchen. Things are only going to get hotter now. And his notions that the GOP nomination is somehow a magic force field that will stop prosecution dead in its tracks is merely a fantasy. Trump’s never known accountability in all his 77 years on this earth. He’s about to get a Ph.D in the subject from the school of hard knocks. It’s a dear school but a fool can learn in no other.
Understanding the importance of the Chesebro guilty plea requires a knowledgeable political commentator with a law degree. Thank you, Ursula.
It seems that everything this disgraced, over-educated criminal mind had to say was in furtherance of multiple crimes.
Therefore, NO attorney-client privilege for America’s worst former President. Yep. He’s definitely pooping his pampers now.
I am ready for my own show on MSNBC at any time. :)) I worked for ambulance chasers in L.A. for quite a number of years and I could tell you some stories about that. The machinations of Chesebro, Eastman and we won’t even bring up Giuliani, reminds me of the insurance fraud I saw, but on steroids. The unspeakable hubris of what these people have attempted to do, overthrow the government of the United States, puts me on the floor.
I was always taught to respect the graduates of ivy League law schools, but I’ll tell you something, I would rather deal with a lawyer from the mom and pop night law school that I put myself through than one of these shysters. At least we were honest. We certainly weren’t looking to whore out a law degree in the furtherance of criminal behavior. (BTW, 212 of us started law school and 13 of us actually got our J.D. That’s how many people fell by the wayside, you believe that?)
I can’t wait to see what Eastman does. That will be revelatory. And he’s got to do something, right? Because he wants to stay out of prison every bit as much as Chesebro and Powell. On that you may depend.
I DO believe it. Law school was one of my unaccomplished dreams, but I knew for a fact it would have never been close to easy.
As for Chesebro and Powell, someone made a comment (a positive one) to Jack Smith on tft (the former twitter) about working with Fani Willis and he made a great comment: “She flips them, and I serve them up. That’s how you make a meal for justice”. I love it!
One could logically wonder if all those that need to be flipped do actually flip, ultimately leaving the malodorous mango sitting alone in a courtroom all by himself with his shadow, hopelessly trying to defend himself, whilst being drowned in the factual truth confronting him.
Seems like the ketchup bottle is hitting the wall.
Here’s what I’d like to know. The clusterf-ck in the House is really all due to fanatical Trump loyalists fighting for position. When are they going to realize that Trump’s goose is cooked, thagt he can’t save them, and that all their maneuvers and manipulations are futile?