Another Domino Falls in Georgia

In addition to his malignant narcissism and endless lies, one dominant feature of Donald Trump is that in the final analysis, he has no loyalty to anyone save himself.  Wives, children, supposed friends all give way to his overarching, insatiable ego and now, facing 91 indictments, staying out of prison.  Much to Trump's likely dismay, two domino's fell this past week in the Georgia RICO case based on Trump's insurrectionist efforts in Georgia. Both Sydney "the Kraken" Powell, who was part of White House meetings and a public face of Trump's Big Lie" campaign and Kenneth Chesebro, one of the designers of the fake elector operation copped guilty pleas to avoid conviction for more serious crimes and prison time and agreed to testify against other defendants.  Seemingly, Powell and Chesebro belatedly decided that Trump was not worth prison time and recognized that Trump bore no loyalty to them.  In short, self-preservation won out and both put their personal best interests over continuing to lie for Trump.  One can only wonder if other defendants will follow their example and prove potentially willing to throw Trump under the bus.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at these latest dominos to fall.  Here are excerpts:

Three down, 16 to go.  With the attorney Kenneth Chesebro agreeing to plead guilty to a single felony today, the Fulton County, Georgia, racketeering case against Donald Trump and others for attempting to steal the 2020 election has one more conviction and one fewer defendant.

As part of the deal, Chesebro pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to file false documents. He’ll pay $5,000 in fines, write an apology letter, and face five years of probation. Perhaps most important, he agreed to testify in upcoming trials. Chesebro faced seven counts that portrayed him as central to a scheme to send slates of false electors to Washington, D.C., after the 2020 election and to efforts to disrupt the certification of the election on January 6, 2021, in Congress. He had argued that he was merely offering legal opinions to clients.

The question for anyone watching the proceedings now is whether these pleas portend the sort of falling-dominos scenario that prosecutors hope for in a big racketeering case like this, in which low-level defendants decide to cut their losses and aid prosecutors in convicting the biggest names—in this case, a group including Trump, Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer John Eastman, and the former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who has closely followed the case, cautioned against expectations of a flurry of pleas now. But he told me that the agreements will force other defendants to think carefully about their choices. . . . . “Are [defendants] willing to take the deals of the kind that Powell and Chesebro took, or are they going to fall on their swords for Donald Trump and go down with him?”

This week’s pleas appear to be a win for all parties. Chesebro and Powell both got fairly lenient sentences and, as first offenders, can have their convictions wiped from the record if they comply with the terms of the deals. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, meanwhile, scored two convictions and will now be able to draw on testimony from two people who were deeply enmeshed in the paperwork coup.

The pleas also spare all parties the rigamarole of a trial. . . . Now neither has to deal with the stress—and legal bills—of a trial. Nor do Willis and her team have to go through the exercise and risk revealing their strategy before the other defendants go on trial . . . . “It’s clear to me now that the D.A. sees them as linchpins, and they want them to testify.”

Given that Chesebro has been described as a key architect of the false-elector scheme, he could presumably speak to the actions of the major players, perhaps even Trump’s. But Chesebro’s deposition for the House committee gives few hints of what he might be able to divulge. He said that his main contacts on the campaign included the close Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, and that he had spoken with Giuliani only once or twice. But in most cases, he invoked both the Fifth Amendment and attorney-client privilege to avoid giving answers, including about whether he had any direct communication with Trump.

That will be different if and when he is called to testify in Fulton County. The judge in the case has already ruled that attorney-client privilege does not apply to some of Chesebro’s communications under an exception that covers the commission of crimes, and having pleaded guilty, Chesebro can’t cite his right against self-incrimination. His role, instead, will be to incriminate others.