While donald trump is facing multiple criminal indictments across various jurisdictions, he's not facing them alone. There are others brought into the various conspiratorial actions who are caught between staying loyal to a crime boss like trump and deciding what's best for themselves and their families.
This is most apparent in the Georgia racketeering charges involving 19 people, facing indictments over various schemes tied together in an attempt to force Georgia officials to flip election results to trump. One of the things you see in a large-scale criminal trial is how any of the lower-level suspects jump at plea deal arrangements to avoid serious jail time. It's a truism in the legal system (known as the Prisoner's Dilemma): The ones who flip first tend to get the best plea deals. But what also happens is that others along the chain of racketeering charges feel the pressure to flip to get the next-best deals. So one of the things people were watching as matters move quickly to trial (I'm hearing late October for some of the defendants) was who flips first in Georgia and how it would affect the others to get them to flip.
This past weekend, those dominoes began tipping over. One of the lower-rung defendants Scott Hall agreed in court to a deal that would involve his testimony (via Charlie Gile, Dareh Gregorian, Blayne Alexander and Katie S. Phang at NBC News):
Hall is the first defendant to enter a plea in the case.
Under the terms of an agreement with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' office, Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges and will be sentenced to five years' probation, if he abides by the terms of the deal. He also agreed to testify in related court hearings and trials stemming from the sprawling 41-count indictment that was unsealed in August.
Hall, 59, is a bail bondsman who was hit with charges relating to a voting system breach in Georgia’s Coffee County in early 2021. He was also the first of the 19 defendants charged in the case to surrender last month.
Also named in the indictment as participating in the Coffee County conspiracy was former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who is scheduled to stand trial on those charges in late October. Powell has pleaded not guilty.
The speculation quickly turned on how quickly Powell - one of trump's most enthusiastic defenders in the "Stolen Votes" Big Lie - will turn. As David Badash posts over at Raw Story:
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and frequent MSNBC contributor, says Hall "was in the thick of things with Sidney Powell on Jan 7 for the Coffee County scheme involving voting machines. If he's cooperating, it's a bad sign for her."
Hall's plea deal "spells bad news for, among others, Sidney Powell," says former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, an NYU Law professor of law. Goodman posted a graphic showing the overlap in charges against Hall and Powell, which he called "alleged joint actions."
It may not be speculation. The Fulton County DA dropped hints they have further plea deals in the works, conveniently done at a preliminary hearing involving Powell's upcoming trial (via Hannah Rabinowitz at CNN):
The revelation came during a procedural hearing for former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the fake elector scheme. They are the first defendants in the case set to go on trial on October 23 on charges related to alleged plots to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state.
Trial dates for former President Donald Trump and the other 16 co-defendants have not been set.
Prosecutor Nathan Wade said during the hearing that while the district attorney’s office has not yet offered a plea deal to Powell or Chesebro, it may soon.
“We have not, at this point, made an offer,” Wade said during the hearing.
“Is the state in a position to make one in the near future?” Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, asked.
“Judge, I believe that we can,” Wade said. “We’ll sit down and kind of put some things together, and we’ll reach out to defense counsel individually to extend an offer...”
Prosecutors usually don't advertise even a hint of deals getting done unless they're certain they've got the defendants on the ropes begging "no mas."
There may not be a lot connecting Scott Hall to donald trump in terms of conspiring to overturn legal election results, but there is a lot connecting Powell to trump. She was all over the map, filing numerous legal stunts to deny election results in vain attempts to steal the 2020 election for trump. She was in the room when the plans were laid out to interfere with the January 6th congressional confirmation of the Electoral College results.
If the DA is this close to getting Powell to plead out is a sign that they've got more than enough evidence to convict, and she's reconsidering whether to stay loyal enough to a crime boss like trump to take a 10-to-20 year stint in a Georgia penitentiary.
Getting Powell to flip on a plea deal would have to involve her agreeing to testify to everything she discussed and planned with her fellow co-conspirators, which would have to include trump himself.
Keep sweating, trump. You're not going to have anybody putting themselves on the line for you when shit gets real.
1 comment:
Powell, like Jenna Ellis is an attorney, and as such will lose her license to practice if convicted of a felony. They are not the only attorneys under such circumstances who will be trying their asses off to get the charges lowered to misdemeanors.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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