(Washington) A third co-defendant of former US President Donald Trump in Georgia, lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, accused of being one of the masterminds of the plan to reverse the results of the 2020 election, pleaded guilty on Friday as part of a deal with the prosecution.
This is the second agreement in this matter in less than 24 hours. Conservative lawyer Sidney Powell, who was to be tried with Mr. Chesebro in a trial beginning Monday, pleaded guilty Thursday to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to interfere with election duties.
PHOTO ELIJAH NEWS, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Attorney Sidney Powell
Kenneth Chesebro, 62, facing seven counts, pleaded guilty to the single count of forgery during a hearing in Atlanta, the capital of Georgia.
He received a five-year suspended prison sentence, $5,000 in restitution to Georgia, 100 hours of community service and delivered a letter of apology to the voters of that state.
Mr. Chesebro will have, in exchange for the dropping of the six other charges, to testify at the future trials of the other defendants, including Mr. Trump and his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, at a date still undetermined.
This agreement came as the registration of 450 potential jurors for his trial, now canceled, had just begun before the same judge.
Mr. Chesebro is mainly accused of having written and sent notes with a view to replacing the electoral votes obtained in 2020 in Georgia by Democrat Joe Biden with those of the outgoing Republican president, a maneuver at the heart of the alleged plot.
A total of 19 defendants are named in the indictment issued August 14 in Fulton County Court, notably under a Georgia law on organized crime, but only Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell have claimed a quick judgment.
Besides Mme Powell and Mr. Chesebro, a first defendant, Scott Hall, already pleaded guilty on September 29.
Donald Trump will also be tried in federal court in Washington starting March 4 for his allegedly illicit attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The former president, favorite in the Republican primaries, denounces his legal troubles as so much “electoral interference” at the instigation of the Biden administration to exclude him from the race for the White House in 2024.