An attorney for Donald Trump has told prosecutors in Georgia that one of the former president’s top aides told her in December 2020 that Trump was “not going to leave” the White House “under any circumstances”, despite having lost the election to Joe Biden.
The revelation from Jenna Ellis came during an interview with the Georgia district attorney’s office in Fulton County. Ellis is cooperating as part of a plea agreement in the Georgia election interference case against Trump and various allies.
Sections of the video recordings were published on Monday by ABC News and the Washington Post, along with excerpts from interviews with lawyer Sidney Powell and two other defendants who have reached plea agreements in the case in exchange for testifying.
Ellis said the longtime Trump aide – his deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino – told her “the boss” would refuse to cede power. She also alluded to two other “relevant” instances for the case but did not disclose them in the video, apparently prevented from doing so by attorney-client privilege.
Ellis described Scavino’s response to her scepticism that Trump had any more legal avenues left to challenge his election loss, saying: “And he said to me, you know, in a kind of excited tone: ‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave.’”.
The recordings of the four defendants’ statements were required under the terms of their plea deals, in order that their knowledge of events could be used in cases against other defendants.
The Post also reviewed statements from Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall and lawyer Kenneth Chesebro. Chesebro claimed he gave Trump a summary of a memo in which he offered advice on the alternate slates of electors, which were created in a plot to cast fake ballots for Trump in states that Biden had legitimately won. The statements could provide evidence Trump knew of the plot.
Powell also explained her sudden rise, and that of other previously lesser known lawyers, to becoming key advisers to Trump in the last days of his presidency: “Because we were the only ones willing to support his effort to sustain the White House. I mean, everybody else was telling him to pack up and go.”
Trump faces a total 90 criminal charges in four separate indictments. He is accused of election subversion, retention of government secrets and illicit hush-money payments to a porn actor.
He also faces civil lawsuits over his business affairs, and a rape allegation a judge deemed “substantially true”. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and sought to portray himself as a victim of political persecution.
He continues to hold commanding poll leads over the rest of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
