This morning we got word that Jenna Ellis, a lawyer on donald trump's payroll since 2019, made a plea agreement with the Fulton County DA's office. Via Gringlas at NPR:
Ellis is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the broad racketeering case focused on efforts to keep then-President Donald Trump in office after his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
Lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell entered guilty pleas last week just before their trial was set to begin. Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pleaded guilty in September.
In exchange for truthful testimony at future trials, Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been charged with two counts, including racketeering...
Ellis' charge stems from a Dec. 3, 2020, subcommittee hearing of Georgia's Senate Judiciary Committee where Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Ray Smith made a litany of baseless claims of widespread election fraud.
Guliani and Smith, both co-defendants in the Georgia case, asserted that tens of thousands of minors, felons and dead people voted in Georgia's 2020 election. Ellis pleaded guilty to aiding this testimony, which prosecutors say was intended to convince the legislature to disregard Biden's victory in Georgia.
"The false statements were made with reckless disregard for the truth," prosecutor Daysha Young said at Tuesday's plea hearing.
DA Willis hadn't charged too much on Ellis, so there wasn't much for Ellis to plead out. She's still getting a sweetheart deal because - as any fan of Law & Order franchise will tell you - the ones who flip the earliest in a criminal conspiracy case are the ones who get the best deals.
What all these early plea deals do is put pressure on the remaining defendants - 15 to go - to make plea deals of their own before one of the others sets them up as the scapegoat. There are tiers to this racketeering case - the ones who made the plans, the ones who carried out the illegal acts, the ones who covered for the others - and it's clear prosecutors want the major players, giving the lesser members - the ones with more to lose - more incentive to flip now instead of later.
Ellis' plea deal is a serious blow to Ray Smith and Rudy Giuliani, so the expectation is that they might flip next. Smith could, since he's a state-level lawyer whose career - and life outside of prison - is at stake. But Giuliani might not: His reputation and livelihood are now so directly tied to trump's fortunes that he can't make a clean break.
And trump of course - because his whole self-worth and ongoing grift is tied into the Big Lie of "stollen elections" - will never plead out. he will enter the court trial and try to bully and gaslight his way out of it.
Much like he's trying to bully and gaslight his way out of the January 6th indictments he's facing in Washington DC, except for the revelation tonight that Mark Meadows - trump's acting Chief of Staff during his final days in the White House - gave hours' worth of testimony to Jack Smith's grand jury and received full immunity as part of the deal. Via the Guardian:
The testimony that Meadows provided to prosecutors included evidence that he repeatedly told Trump in the immediate aftermath of the election that the allegations about fraud were unsubstantiated, ABC reported.
Exactly when Meadows was granted immunity and when he testified before the grand jury in Washington remains unclear but he appeared at least three times, ABC reported. Trump was indicted in August for conspiring to defraud the United States among other charges stemming from the investigation.
The cooperation of Meadows in the criminal case against Trump would be a victory for the special counsel, Jack Smith, because Meadows was among the closest advisers to Trump in the post-2020 election period and had direct knowledge of virtually every aspect of the charges...
Meadows was literally in the room when it happened (yes, quoting from the Hamilton musical is unavoidable). There are multiple eyewitness accounts from other parties - Cassidy Hutchinson, Meadows' aide, already testified what Meadows knew and did to the Congressional hearings last year - that made it impossible for Meadows to testify otherwise. There'd been reports for months - especially when he wasn't named in the indictments Smith's grand jury issued against trump this past August - that Meadows had an immunity deal, but we're getting confirmation now.
That the Special Counsel team is willing to let this information out there hints to the likelihood they are ready to act on Meadows' testimony, increasing the likelihood that additional indictments over January 6th - and maybe even more indictments in the classified documents case - not only for trump but the other insurrection plotters are coming very soon.
Thing is for Meadows, while this deal grants immunity at the federal level, it doesn't cover state like the conspiracy charges he's facing in Georgia. Seeing how he's already made a deal with Smith, NOW would be the perfect time for Meadows to make a deal with Willis.
If donald trump's empire was a ship (not a luxury liner, but a garbage scow), it's already hit the iceberg, and the rats better get off it quick before they sink.
1 comment:
...AAaand the judge in his civil fraud case just made him sit in the witness chair and then charged him $10,000 for what he said.
Meadows may not be a cooperative witness, and the immunity deal was probably to force his testimony after he pled the fifth repeatedly. Jack Smith just needed to get him on the record under oath saying that Fergus definitely knew he lost the election, as a lot of his case is built around that. He got it.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Post a Comment