ATLANTA — The Fulton County district attorney’s office has offered immunity deals to some of the alternate GOP electors who met at the Georgia Capitol and cast phony Electoral College votes for Donald Trump following the 2020 election.
In a court motion filed Tuesday, the DA’s office also disclosed that it has been interviewing several of those Republicans in recent weeks, and that some of them accused a fellow elector of committing “acts that are violations of Georgia law,” the motion stated, without revealing specifics.
The DA’s office filed the motion in an attempt to disqualify from the case attorney Kimberly Burroughs Debrow, who is representing 10 of the electors. In the explosive motion, prosecutors allege that Debrow failed to inform her clients about the potential immunity deals after they were offered last summer.
Prosecutors said they had been told by Debrow and her then-co-counsel, Holly Pierson, on Aug. 5, 2022, that none of their clients were interested in immunity. But during interviews with the electors last week, some electors “told members of the investigation team that no potential offer of immunity was ever brought to them in 2022, which is in direct conflict with ... Ms. Pierson’s representation to this court,” prosecutors alleged.
Their motion said Debrow’s representation of the 10 electors has become an “impracticable and ethical mess.”
“It is unfathomable how Ms. Debrow can offer competent and adequate counsel to her client who has been accused of further crimes,” the motion said. “(A)ny claim of all 10 of her clients being similarly situated has gone out the window.”
A spokesman for Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis declined to comment. Debrow did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a written statement, Pierson called the DA’s allegations “entirely false.” “Sadly, the DA’s office continues to seem more interested in media attention, trampling on the constitutional rights of innocent citizens, and recklessly defaming its perceived opponents than in the facts, the law, or the truth,” Pierson said.
This is not the first time the DA’s office sought Debrow’s disqualification. Last October, it pushed for the removal of both Debrow and Pierson, who at the time represented 11 of the alternate electors, a group that also involved then-Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer.
In November, Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that Debrow and Pierson could represent Shafer or the other 10 electors, but not both since they were “substantially differently situated” in terms of the criminal investigation.
After that, Pierson received permission to represent Shafer. Among the 10 being represented by Debrow are state Sen. Shawn Still, GOP party treasurer Joseph Brannan, GOP assistant treasurer Vikki Consiglio and Atlanta lawyer Brad Carver.
The GOP electors signed sham documents claiming to be Georgia’s duly elected Electoral College representatives during a ceremony in mid-December 2020.
The state GOP spent more than $220,000 last year to defend the electors in court, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. Debrow’s firm received $170,000 in legal fees in 2022, while Pierson has been paid at least $52,000. Debrow received another $87,000 in February, according to campaign finance filings.
All 16 of the GOP electors were informed last summer that they were “targets” of the DA’s investigation examining criminal interference in Georgia’s 2020 elections. The Fulton DA’s office was later barred from pursuing one of those electors, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, due to a political conflict of interest. (The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia will ultimately decide whether a special prosecutor should investigate Jones.)
The filing comes as Willis decides whether to bring criminal charges against Trump, the electors or anyone else in the case. Indictment decisions are expected to be announced as soon as next month.
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