Three lawyers who were charged in the Georgia racketeering case against Donald Trump, which stems from his efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, recently pleaded guilty to lesser charges and agreed to testify for the prosecution. Meanwhile, ABC News reports that Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff during the last two years of his administration, has been cooperating with Special Counsel Jack Smith in the federal case that charges Trump with three conspiracy counts based on much of the same conduct described in the Georgia indictment.
These former Trump insiders could provide evidence that would illuminate the former president's knowledge and intent, which are crucial to proving the state and federal charges that accuse him of illegally interfering in the election. Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis argue that Trump knew he had lost the election but nevertheless attempted to overturn Joe Biden's victory through means he knew were illegal. Trump's lawyers say he sincerely believed (and still believes) that he was a victim of massive election fraud and, based on the legal advice he received, that the remedies he pursued were legitimate.
What does Meadows have to say that might shed light on those conflicting claims? He facilitated much of the conduct described in both indictments, which was based on election fraud allegations he now says he recognized as baseless by mid-December 2020. Meadows is not charged in the federal case but is one of Trump's 17 co-defendants in the Georgia indictment. He was granted immunity to testify before the grand jury in the federal case, and he also sat for interviews with Smith's investigators.
Trump certainly seems worried about what Meadows might say on the stand. In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump noted that the threat of imprisonment in Georgia had put Meadows under a lot of pressure to plead guilty and cooperate with the prosecution. "Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future our Failing Nation," Trump wrote. "I don't think that Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows?"
One reason for Trump's concern is that Meadows reportedly has repudiated the former president's claim that Biden stole the election. In his 2021 memoir The Chief's Chief, Meadows was still embracing the gist of Trump's stolen-election fantasy. "I was well aware that this sounded like a conspiracy theory," he wrote. "In a sense, that was all part of the Democrats' game. The people who rigged this election knew that eventually, these irregularities would come to light….They conducted the operation, then attacked anyone who dared ask questions about what they had done." He complained that Biden's "allies in the liberal media" ignored "actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze," and he noted that Trump had charged Rudy Giuliani, among others, with "tell[ing] the country" about "the fraud" and "the dirty tricks" that supposedly had "rigged" the election.
But according to ABC News, which cites "sources familiar with the matter," Meadows was singing a different tune when he was interviewed by federal prosecutors. He reportedly said Trump was "dishonest" in claiming victory before the votes had been counted on election night, even while complaining about "a major fraud" aimed at concealing that result. "Obviously we didn't win," Meadows reportedly told Smith's team, saying he had never seen any evidence of fraud on a scale that would have changed the outcome. In "mid-to-late November," former Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon has said, he told Meadows that "we weren't finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states." According to ABC's sources, Meadows said he shared that conclusion with Trump by mid-December, informing him that "Giuliani hadn't produced any evidence to back up the many allegations he was making."
Several other advisers, including then–Attorney General Bill Barr, privately delivered the same assessment to Trump around the same time. Did Trump take it to heart? After the Supreme Court turned away his final election challenge on December 11, 2020, Meadows reportedly told investigators, Trump said something to the effect of "then that's the end" or "so that's it."
Was Trump admitting that Biden had won the election, or merely that the Trump campaign's litigation had failed? "While speaking with investigators, Meadows was specifically asked if Trump ever acknowledged to him that he'd lost the election," ABC News says. "Meadows told investigators he never heard Trump say that, according to sources." And according to Barr, Trump continued to privately insist that systematic fraud had denied him his rightful victory.
Whatever misgivings Meadows may have had about Trump's attempts to validate that contention, they did not stop him from setting up the notorious telephone call in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" the votes he needed to claim that state's electoral votes. Trump raised one unsubstantiated fraud claim after another and seemed utterly unfazed by Raffensperger's rebuttals. That conversation happened on January 2, 2021, four days before Trump supporters who believed his phony grievance rioted at the U.S. Capitol.
Meadows, who reportedly told Smith's team that he considered resigning as chief of staff but decided to stay on to ensure a peaceful transition, has publicly said that he was trying to resolve Trump's complaints about the election in Georgia and that his role in the call was limited to introducing the participants, which is consistent with the transcript. The Georgia indictment nevertheless alleges that Meadows solicited Raffensperger to violate his oath of office, a felony punishable by one to three years in prison. He also faces a racketeering count, punishable by five to 20 years in prison, for allegedly participating in an "enterprise" aimed at illegally keeping Trump in power.
In addition to the phone call with Raffensperger, the indictment cites several other "overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy" that involved Meadows. They include communications and meetings with state legislators and election officials whom Trump was trying to enlist in his cause and Meadows' attempt to observe a "signature match audit" in Cobb County, Georgia, on December 22, 2020. Some of this conduct happened after Meadows, per ABC's sources, had concluded that Trump's fraud claims were unfounded. But unless Meadows rejects Trump's warning and decides to plead guilty in Georgia, he surely will argue that he was merely doing his job by trying to allay his boss's concerns.
Whether those concerns were sincere is another matter. The evidence on that question is mixed, but it is largely consistent with the hypothesis that Trump was convinced he had won the election, stubbornly discounted all the evidence to the contrary, and listened only to advisers who told him what he wanted to hear. Judging from the ABC News report, Meadows' testimony would underline the unreasonableness of Trump's avowed belief that the election was stolen, although it would not provide direct evidence that Trump was deliberately perpetrating a scam.
What about Sidney Powell, one of the Georgia defendants who has agreed to testify for the prosecution? Powell, a lawyer who was initially identified as a member of the Trump campaign's "elite strike force team," assiduously promoted an elaborate conspiracy theory that claimed Biden had stolen the election through a combination of deliberately corrupted voting machines and phony ballot dumps. Even after the campaign officially separated itself from her, she still had the president's ear, and he and Giuliani continued to tell essentially the same story.
Powell has gone back and forth about the veracity of that story, which she pushed in numerous TV appearances and post-election lawsuits. Although she promised to "release the Kraken" of evidence that would prove her claims, that beast never materialized. And in defending her against the resulting defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, her lawyers argued that "no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact," noting that the company itself had described her claims as "wild" and "outlandish." Powell subsequently backtracked from that apparent admission, promising to "expose what really happened."
Then Powell backtracked from her backtracking. Fighting professional sanctions based on Powell's frivolous litigation in Michigan, her lawyers said she was merely echoing her clients' concerns. "Millions of Americans believe the central contentions of the complaint to be true," the lawyers said on her behalf, "and perhaps they are." Or perhaps not.
Powell still (or again) seems to lean toward the former assessment. Her account on X (formerly Twitter) includes a pinned post showing a graph that is meant to support claims of fraud in Fulton County, and on Sunday she shared an X post about a survey finding that "almost half of Democrat voters say that it is very likely or somewhat likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election."
In the Georgia case, Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of intentionally interfering with public officials' election duties. Those charges stemmed from her arrangement with SullivanStrickler, a forensic data firm that copied election software and ballot records at the Board of Elections and Registration Office in Coffee County, Georgia, the day after the Capitol riot. That was part of Powell's fruitless efforts to show that tricky election software had switched Trump votes to Biden votes.
Under her plea agreement, Powell will avoid prison and a criminal record if she successfully completes six years of probation and testifies truthfully in the upcoming racketeering trials of Trump and the other defendants. Powell's history of peddling "wild" and "outlandish" fraud claims could be a problem for prosecutors trying to present her as a credible witness. Her on-again, off-again status as a true believer also could complicate the government's case. More to the point, while Powell can confirm some of the "overt acts" described in the indictment and may be able to shed light on Trump's motivation in pushing the stolen-election narrative, it is not clear that she has any knowledge of whether Trump actually believed that narrative.
Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer who pleaded guilty in Georgia this week, appeared alongside Powell and Giuliani at the bizarre November 19, 2020, press conference where they laid out their election conspiracy theory. Like Meadows, Ellis was charged with both racketeering and soliciting the violation of a public officer's oath—in her case, based on her participation in a hearing aimed at persuading Georgia legislators to recognize Trump's electors instead of Biden's. Also like Meadows, Ellis figures in several "overt acts" listed in the indictment, including that crazy press conference, meetings and phone calls aimed at persuading state legislators to recognize Trump's "alternate" electors, and memorandums arguing that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to block or delay congressional ratification of Biden's victory.
Ellis pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, referring to baseless election fraud claims during a Georgia Senate hearing in which she participated. Like Powell, she won't go to jail as long as she testifies truthfully for the prosecution. "As an attorney who is also a Christian, I take my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously and I endeavor to be a person of sound moral and ethical character in all of my dealings," a tearful Ellis said upon entering her guilty plea on Tuesday. But when she participated in Trump's efforts to remain in office, she said, "I failed to do my due diligence….I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information….What I did not do, but should have done, your honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were, in fact, true."
This was not Ellis' first admission that she erred by promoting Trump's fraud claims. Last March, in response to a professional complaint against her in Colorado, Ellis admitted that she had made 10 "misrepresentations" while "serving as counsel for the Trump campaign and personal counsel to President Trump." But she insisted those were honest mistakes and complained that "the politically-motivated Left" was "trying to falsely discredit me by saying I admitted I lied." Not so, she said: "I would NEVER lie. Lying requires INTENTIONALLY making a false statement."
Trump, who was told over and over again that his claims had not panned out and reportedly laughed at some elements of Powell's conspiracy theory, may have a harder time asserting that defense. But if we accept Ellis' assertion that she had no reason to doubt the president's claims, it seems unlikely that she ever heard him express reservations about them.
Ellis' testimony could, however, undermine Trump's defense that he reasonably relied on his lawyers' advice in pursuing the "alternate" electors scheme and pressuring Pence to intervene in the electoral vote count on January 6, 2021. As she describes it, any lawyer who performed "due diligence" would have recognized that such remedies had no empirical basis. The implication is that the "lawyers with many more years of experience" on whom she relied, presumably including Giuliani and John Eastman (another Georgia racketeering defendant), pressed fraud allegations they should have known had no merit.
"There is no question that a swarm of MAGA lawyers surrounded Trump at each step of the process," New York Times columnist David French writes, "but if the lawyers themselves have admitted to engaging in criminal conduct, then that weakens his legal defense. This was no normal legal team, and their conduct was far outside the bounds of normal legal representation."
The remaining lawyer defendants surely will contest that characterization. Kenneth Chesebro, the third lawyer who has agreed to testify in the Georgia trials, originally faced a racketeering charge and six additional felony counts related to the "alternate" electors plan. Like Ellis, he wrote legal memos in support of that scheme. He pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to file false documents, which prosecutors said was based on his creation and distribution of "false Electoral College documents" to Trump allies in Georgia. But after his guilty plea, CNBC reported, his lawyer "said it was inaccurate to describe Chesebro as the architect of a plan to subvert democracy."
That statement can be interpreted in a couple of ways: as casting blame on other strategists, such as Giuliani and Eastman, or as denying that there was anything improper about presenting "contingent" electors in case Trump's Georgia election lawsuit proved successful. Giuliani and Eastman are bound to raise the latter argument in support of their contention that their advice to Trump was not "far outside the bounds of normal legal representation." But Chesebro's guilty plea, which on its face concedes that promoting the "alternate" electors was illegal, will make that harder.
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