Kenneth Chesebro seeks to invalidate plea deal in Trump Georgia case
Kenneth Chesebro, a former lawyer for President-elect Trump, is seeking to invalidate his plea deal in the Georgia election interference case that also swept up his former boss as a defendant.
Chesebro, along with 18 co-conspirators, including Trump, was charged over efforts tied to overturning the 2020 election in the state. He is one of four of those co-defendants to have accepted a plea agreement in the case. A court document filed Wednesday indicates Chesebro, known as the architect of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, is asking the court to invalidate that agreement.
Trump pleaded not guilty.
Chesebro, however, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. It allowed him to avoid jail time and have his record wiped after he completed a five-year probation period. His probation would terminate after three years if he had good behavior.
Chesebro wrote a series of memos devising the Trump campaign’s alternate electors scheme after Trump’s loss in 2020.
He was set to go to trial last year and would have been the first defendant in the case to do so, but he struck a plea deal making him the second defendant to plead guilty after another Trump attorney, Sidney Powell.
In September, Fulton County, Ga., Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee struck several counts from the indictment, including the one Chesebro pleaded guilty to.
Chesebro’s attorney argued Wednesday that not granting the request would violate the “Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The district attorney’s office is expected to appeal McAfee’s September ruling but has yet to do so.
The Georgia case was among four criminal cases Trump faced leading up to the election. Both of his federal cases are being moved to be dismissed by the special counsel overseeing them and his attorneys are seeking to toss his New York conviction.
The Georgia case is still active but is largely on hold after a judge cancelled an upcoming proceeding involving an appeal of whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on the case following an improper relationship she had with a top prosecutor she appointed to oversee it. No further dates have been rescheduled on the matter.
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