Judge upholds guilty plea of Trump co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro in Georgia election case

A Georgia judge on Friday dismissed a request by Kenneth Chesebro, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in the sweeping 2020 election subversion and interference case, to have his guilty plea thrown out.

Trump, Chesebro and 17 others were charged in August 2023 with playing separate roles in an alleged criminal conspiracy to overturn the results in Georgia of the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to President Joe Biden.

Chesebro, an election lawyer, pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy count later that year after reaching a deal with prosecutors that required him to cooperate and provide inside knowledge of the alleged election racketeering conspiracy.

Last week, Chesebro's defense attorney asked that the plea be thrown out on the grounds that it violated his constitutional right to due process.

In all, four of Trump's co-defendants have pleaded guilty in the case and are cooperating with prosecutors. The case is on hold while an appellate court decides whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be removed from overseeing it due to ethical and financial conflicts of interest alleged by defendants.

In a swift response, Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee concluded in his ruling Friday that Chesebro's request was procedurally "defective in more ways than one."

McAfee concluded that while Chesebro’s filing challenged the validity of the indictment, he had “already submitted a plea in response to this indictment — one of guilt.”

Also, he said, Chesebro waited too long to file his request because it must be done during the same judicial term in which he entered his plea.

USA TODAY has reached out to Chesebro and his lawyers for comment.

Does the judge's ruling have wider implications for the case against Trump and 18 others?

In his plea, Chesebro admitted to a single count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.

One legal analyst who has watched the case closely said McAfee’s ruling Friday was based narrowly on the procedural facts of the case, and that Chesebro simply waited too long to file his motion to invalidate his plea.

“Guilty pleas must be withdrawn within the same term of court – a two-month period – from the day they are entered,” said Chris Timmons, a Georgia trial lawyer and former state prosecutor in Cobb and DeKalb counties for 17 years. “We’re over a year. He’s way out of time.”

It’s also likely that McAfee will stay the case against Trump personally while he's in the White House, based on longstanding Department of Justice policy regarding the prosecution of a sitting president, said Timmons, a partner with the law firm Knowles Gallant Timmons.

But McAfee “doesn’t have to dismiss it for that reason,” and in the meantime could continue the case against Trump’s co-defendants, Timmons said.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University College of Law professor, said McAfee’s ruling could have broader implications in the near term.

Kreis agreed that Chesebro’s motion to set aside the plea deal “was not procedurally sound. And Judge McAfee recognized that in his order.”

But he also said McAfee was making a broader statement in ruling the way he did.

“I think there was some feeling that because Trump won in November that his co-defendants might benefit from a more favorable environment. Not so here,” Kreis told USA TODAY. “This is a reminder that regular order will prevail for the remaining co-defendants even while Donald Trump occupies the White House.”

After his Nov. 5 election victory, Trump and his team of lawyers have moved to throw out all of his criminal cases and convictions on the grounds that the American public voted him into office for a second term and he shouldn’t have to suffer from continuing “lawfare” from prosecutors.

Dropping charges ? and cases ? due to Trump's election victory

Citing a Justice Department policy, special counsel Jack Smith moved to drop both federal criminal cases against Trump, one charging him with illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election results and the other for allegedly unlawfully mishandling classified national defense documents that he shouldn’t have taken with him when he left the White House in January 2021.

In response, two federal judges dismissed the two cases brought by the Justice Department against Trump.

On Dec. 4, Trump asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to order the dismissal of his election racketeering case in the Peach State, arguing the charges are unconstitutional as he prepares to return to the White House. As part of that, they asked the appeals court to order McAfee to dismiss the Fulton County charges against Trump.

The appellate court has not decided. But its decision should result in the court determining that neither it nor a Georgia trial court has the power to oversee any further criminal process against Trump, the defense lawyers wrote.

That five-page request was similar in nature to a more lengthy Trump filing made public Tuesday, which asked a Manhattan criminal court to throw out his convictions on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Judge Juan Merchan postponed sentencing in that case while he considers the request.

Trump lawyer Steve Sadow had no comment Friday when asked about McAfee’s latest ruling against Chesebro.

What is Chesebro accused of doing in the election subversion case?

Chesebro pleaded guilty Oct. 20, 2023 to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents in connection with the alleged scheme to recruit fake presidential electors to vote for Trump in Georgia and states that Trump lost to Biden.Chesebro created and distributed false documents in Georgia and other states for people to submit to the National Archives and Congress posing as presidential electors, according to Daysha Young, the executive district attorney in Fulton County.

"The defendant provided detailed instructions to co-conspirators in Georgia and other states for creating and distributing these false documents," she said.

Chesebro's deal was expected to get the prosecution closer to former senior Justice Department official John Eastman, who around that time appears to have been in "constant communication" with Trump and his then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani, said Melissa Redmon, a former Fulton County prosecutor who directs the University of Georgia School of Law's Prosecutorial Justice Program.

By agreeing to cooperate, Chesebro's connections likely would help prosecutors paint a picture for the jury of the false elector activity being ultimately motivated by a desire to make sure Trump retained the presidency "by any means necessary," Redmon said.

There are also pending charges related to the fake electors scheme in state and federal courts in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia, according to the Associated Press.

Earlier this week, Wisconsin prosecutors filed 10 additional felony charges in their state case against Chesebro, another Trump attorney in the state in 2020 and Michael Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020 who is also charged in the Georgia case and has pleaded not guilty.

The three were allegedly part of a plan to submit paperwork falsely claiming Trump won the battleground state of Wisconsin that year.

Contributing: Bart Jansen, Aysha Bagchi

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Georgia judge upholds Trump co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro guilty plea