The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Allies Take Plea Deals In Georgia — How That Changes The Case

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And joining us again, Sam Greenglass from WABE in Georgia. Hey, Sam. Hi there. Sam, you've been covering the case in Georgia against former President Donald Trump and several of his associates in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And there have been some big developments in the past couple of days.

Starting point is 00:00:25 I want to start with that guilty plea from Jenna Ellis, the Trump lawyer. Remind me who she is. And now that she's made this rather dramatic acknowledgement of what she did, what she said, what did she do? Yeah, so you might remember Jenna Ellis from these press conferences that the Trump campaign held after the 2020 election. She stood next to the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. And these people were making some pretty baseless claims

Starting point is 00:00:51 about election fraud. And the thing that she was actually charged in connection with was this December 2020 hearing for a Georgia State Senate committee, where Giuliani and some other lawyers got up in front of these lawmakers. And, you know, we're making claims like tens of thousands of dead people, minors, were all voting in Georgia's election, all with the aim, prosecutors say, of getting these state lawmakers to help with their plan of submitting a fake slate of electors for Trump. All we should say, baseless claims. Correct. And so when Jenna Ellis appeared in the courtroom this week to enter a guilty plea, something really unusual happened, at least in the course of the pleas we've had so far in this case.

Starting point is 00:01:36 She asked the judge if she could address the court and make an apology, and she started to weep as she read this statement. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this full experience with deep remorse. For those failures of mine, Your Honor, I have taken responsibility already before the Colorado bar who censured me. And I now take responsibility before this court and apologize to the people of Georgia. Thank you. And what can you tell us, Sam, about why she might have chosen to plead guilty?

Starting point is 00:02:13 Well, in the initial indictment, Ellis, just like everyone else who was charged by District Attorney Fonny Willis in Fulton County, was looking at a racketeering charge, that's a felony, as well as several other counts. And in this plea deal, she ended up with a greatly reduced sentence, one felony charge instead of several. She won't be facing any jail time, a couple of years of probation, some restitution, a letter of apology, community service, which is far different than, you know, putting your fate in the hands of 12 jurors. That could really go any which way at the end of a trial. It's also far different than continuing to pay mounting legal bills, which is something that all the defendants in these grand jury cases have had to pay for weeks, if not months now.

Starting point is 00:02:52 And with the prospect potentially of, you know, she didn't have a trial date of months more of legal bills. She's certainly saving herself a bunch of money by cutting this plea deal now. I mean, we're talking into Ellis's case about what, a couple hundred thousand dollars at least so far? What we do know is that Trump, through his Save America PAC, has paid several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees just up until the time of his indictment in Georgia. So if that provides any suggestion of how expensive some of these really good Atlanta

Starting point is 00:03:21 defense attorneys are, yeah, you could be looking at a lot of money. It ain't cheap. And they could have been looking, yeah, you could be looking at a lot of money. It ain't cheap. And they could have been looking, again, at prison time. And that isn't the only plea deal, right, Sam? I mean, I think this is the fourth plea deal from Trump allies in this case. Catch us up on what's happened so far. Yep. So this is plea deal number four. Remember, there were 19 defendants initially charged. And, you know, it was a little quiet for a while after the indictment. All of these people initially pleaded not guilty. But we've had a bit of a stream over the last

Starting point is 00:03:50 couple of days. And that's really part of the aim of a racketeering prosecution, where you start to pick away at some of the low level players and work your way up as you get closer to trial. And so it's possible we could expect to see more as we go forward. You talk about there being four people so far who have reached these plea deals with the DA down there. What has the reaction been to them? Because they were accused of essentially trying to undermine the election in Georgia. And here they are, you know, they're not facing prison time, basically. Yeah. So let me note the names of the people who have taken these plea deals. We've talked about Jenna Ellis. There's Scott Hall, who was an Atlanta bail bondsman charged in connection with a breach of voting machines in Coffey County. Sidney Powell, who was also involved in that

Starting point is 00:04:34 effort. And then Ken Chesbrough, who prosecutors say was one of the architects of this scheme to submit slates of electors for Trump in states that Biden won. So these are players that touch a lot of different pieces of this alleged conspiracy. And so the hope from prosecutors is that they can each shed light on these different elements of the plan to keep Trump in office. What we don't know is exactly what they'll say on the stand, how far they'll go in that testimony. Will they implicate other people in this scheme or keep their testimony really narrow to what they supposedly were involved in themselves? And so I think as far as judgment goes to some of these sentences, misdemeanors, probation for people who were supposedly involved in helping to try and

Starting point is 00:05:21 overturn an election, I think a lot of people are going to be waiting to see what goods do they bring to the trial? How much are they willing to say before expressing judgment of whether these pleas were too lenient or appropriate given the circumstances? I will say having talked to a couple of former prosecutors today, I've heard mixed reactions. But one thing that everyone always reminds me is the best plea deals come early. So there's a motivation for defendants in a case, particularly a big case like this, to strike a plea deal early while they can get a better deal as opposed to waiting. Yeah, I was listening to a press conference on Monday that featured Norm Eisen of the Brookings Institution, and I think he put it really well, which is that plea deals do not get better over time. They're more like fish than fine wine. I want to talk more about the bigger picture implications of these plea deals in just a moment. But first, it's time for a break. We'll be back in just a second. And we're back. So we've been talking about these

Starting point is 00:06:23 guilty pleas in Georgia. Sam, are there consequences for the larger trajectory of this case? Yeah, this is sort of RICO 101. Prosecutors start trying to peel off some of the lower level players and hopefully use them to climb the ladder and reach into the thinking of the bigwigs, the people they really want to have convictions and prison time at the end of this. So remember, there are 15 other co-defendants, including former President Trump, who have not entered plea deals. That number will probably winnow down with additional deals over the course of this pre-trial moment. And you can also make pleas right up until the time of a verdict. So it's not necessarily an end date in here. And so

Starting point is 00:07:05 I think what we'll be looking for is what exactly each of these players will say on the stand. We don't know at this point. Prosecutors do. They recorded interviews with each of these people who have taken a plea deal before it was set in stone. So they probably have a pretty good sense of what evidence and eyewitness testimony they're going to be able to bring to the table, but we, the public, don't know at this point. So yes, it could have sweeping consequences for these other co-defendants, but the extent to which that's true, we just don't know at this point. Two things that I want to jump in with here. One is there's no guarantee that these folks will be called to testify in a trial. They certainly have credibility issues. Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis

Starting point is 00:07:42 were on TV for months talking about how the election had been thrown and it was all rigged. And then they're going to come in here and say something else in court. Would a jury find them credible? I don't know, but that's certainly a calculation that Willis and her team are going to have to make as they consider using them potentially in trial. The second thing is that's really good and perhaps a motivating factor in part for the DA's office to strike

Starting point is 00:08:05 these plea deals is Powell and Chesbrough had demanded a speedy trial. That means that other defendants would have had a preview of what the DA's case was here if there had indeed been a trial. So striking these plea deals- If they had gone ahead. Yes. Having these plea deals means that Willis gets to hold her fire. The other defendants don't get to see the evidence in the case and how she was going to build it and how she was going to present it. And that, of came at the very last minute. But it also, in addition to, you know, the prosecutors having to potentially reveal the scope of the case that they were going to present in a trial, they also would have had to deal with just the logistics of doing a three to five month trial once, and then doing another one right on the other side of it. So that's a key consideration here that probably spurred prosecutors wanting to make a deal with at least Chas Brewer and Powell.

Starting point is 00:09:07 You know, one question I have about how these plea deals come to be. Do we know if all of the defendants were offered one? We don't. We have an inkling that some others have probably been offered plea deals, but we don't know exactly who and how many. So we've been talking about the implications of these plea deals for the Georgia case. But of course, that's not the only case Trump and his allies are facing related to election interference and other matters. How might whatever comes out in the Georgia case affect these other cases? I mean, it won't necessarily affect the other cases. You know, The federal case in Florida relates to classified documents. The New York case relates to hush money payments. So those two, I think we can probably set aside.

Starting point is 00:09:52 As for the DC election case, prosecutors in Georgia do not have to share information that they get with Jack Smith. These are separate sovereigns, so to speak. There's no obligatory sharing of information back and forth. I don't know whether this is something that Willis has addressed directly down there, Sam. Yeah, I've asked Fonny Willis, the Fulton County prosecutor, this question directly going back to August before these indictments dropped. And she told me that she is not coordinated in any capacity with the Department of Justice. She said Jack Smith probably wouldn't even be able to recognize her if he saw her on the street. And she's continued to say that there's no coordination between her investigation and the federal one. And I think the other point that we can make too,

Starting point is 00:10:33 just as a timeline question, the federal trial is expected to begin in March, and Georgia's will probably happen sometime after that concludes. So you know, if we're talking about witnesses in Georgia who have accepted plea deals taking the stand here in Atlanta, that probably won't even happen until after former President Trump's federal trial has played out and concluded. So let's talk about the timeline here. As you alluded to, these cases keep sneaking further and further out and therefore deeper and deeper into the 2024 presidential campaign season. And, you know, as I've been on the campaign trail in New Hampshire recently, for example, I have heard from Republicans who said it's time to move on from Trump. We don't want somebody

Starting point is 00:11:12 who's facing indictments to be at the top of our party, essentially. Do you hear that from voters in Georgia, Sam? I think it breaks both ways. You know, on one hand, you have this data point that the Trump campaign has made several million dollars off selling merchandise with his Fulton County mugshot on it. So I think there's certainly a segment of the Republican base that is fired up by these prosecutions here in Georgia and other places against the former president. But then I've also spent a lot of time in Atlanta suburbs. These are places that used to vote Republican but have been driven away from the party in the age of Trump. People who tell me that they have not been happy with how Biden has handled his administration. But as we have a nominee who is still former President Trump,

Starting point is 00:11:58 who is in the middle of all of these legal entanglements, I think that could have really big consequences for where Georgia goes at the end of 2024. If you remember, the margin, as has been at the center of this election interference case that we're talking about, was just under 12,000 votes. That's really close. And so some of these middle of the road people in the suburbs, that could matter a lot. All right, we'll leave it there. Sam Greenglass, thanks so much for being with us as always. Thanks, Sarah. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign.

Starting point is 00:12:27 I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Allies Take Plea Deals In Georgia — How That Changes The Case

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.