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Post by Webster on Sept 29, 2023 18:29:30 GMT -5
note: previous GA trial thread can be found here: Part 1(The Guardian) First defendant in Trump Georgia election case pleads guiltyScott Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman, pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges in the Georgia election interference case, becoming the first defendant in the Fulton county case to take a plea deal. Hall was charged in relation to the alleged breach of voting machine equipment in the wake of the 2020 election in Coffee county. Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts as part of a negotiated deal. He appeared before Judge Scott McAfee on Friday afternoon after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors. Addressing Hall, the judge asked: You understand that you’re pleading guilty today because you believe there exists a factual basis that supports the plea, and you are pleading guilty because you are, in fact, guilty?Hall replied: Yes sir.
As part of his plea deal, Atlanta-area bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five counts of “conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties”, a misdemeanor. He will serve five years of probation as part of the sentencing agreement, Judge Scott McAfee said during a hearing in Fulton county superior court. He also agreed to a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service and a ban on polling and election administration-related activities, the judge said.
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Post by Webster on Sept 29, 2023 18:33:51 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Judge denies requests by three Georgia fake electors to move cases to federal courtA federal judge has denied requests made by three fake Trump electors seeking to transfer their criminal cases for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia to federal court. US district judge Steve Jones, in three separate rulings, rejected arguments made by the three defendants that they had acted as federal officials at the time they voted for Donald Trump as electors for the Republican party in Georgia in December 2020. He wrote in all three orders: The Court first determines that presidential electors are not federal officers.The ruling means that the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, can move forward with her prosecution in state court.
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Post by Webster on Oct 19, 2023 17:03:57 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to take plea agreement in Georgia election subversion case Former Donald Trump lawyer Sidney Powell is taking a plea agreement in Georgia’s Fulton county and will plead guilty in the Georgia election subversion case. Powell’s guilty plea to six counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties in the Georgia case comes a day before her trial was set to begin. Powell will get six years’ probation, a $6,000 fine, $2,700 restitution to the state of Georgia, writing an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia and to testify truthfully at trial, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.
Here is video of the the plea agreement being read out to Sidney Powell in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday: Powell is now the second defendant in the case to plead guilty, following bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall who pleaded guilty last month to five misdemeanor charges.
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Post by Webster on Oct 19, 2023 17:04:54 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Nov 14, 2023 16:21:55 GMT -5
(The Guardian) An attorney for Donald Trump has told prosecutors in Georgia that one of the former president’s top aides told her in December 2020 that Trump was “not going to leave” the White House “under any circumstances”, despite having lost the election to Joe Biden. The revelation from Jenna Ellis came during an interview with the Georgia district attorney’s office in Fulton County. Ellis is cooperating as part of a plea agreement in the Georgia election interference case against Trump and various allies. Sections of the video recordings were published on Monday by ABC News and the Washington Post, along with excerpts from interviews with lawyer Sidney Powell and two other defendants who have reached plea agreements in the case in exchange for testifying. Ellis said the longtime Trump aide – his deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino – told her “the boss” would refuse to cede power. She also alluded to two other “relevant” instances for the case but did not disclose them in the video, apparently prevented from doing so by attorney-client privilege. Ellis described Scavino’s response to her scepticism that Trump had any more legal avenues left to challenge his election loss, saying: “And he said to me, you know, in a kind of excited tone: ‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave.’”.
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Post by Webster on Nov 17, 2023 22:22:16 GMT -5
(NPR) Georgia prosecutors seek an August 2024 trial start for Trump's election case--Prosecutors in Georgia have proposed a start date of Aug. 5, 2024, for the remaining defendants in the 2020 election interference case, including former President Donald Trump. That would be a few weeks after the Republican National Convention. Trump remains the frontrunner to be his party's presidential nominee next year. And a months long trial beginning in August 2024 could stretch beyond the general election. In a court filing Friday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wrote: "This proposed trial date balances potential delays from Defendant Trump's other criminal trials in sister sovereigns and the other Defendants' constitutional speedy trial rights." Apart from the Georgia case, the former president faces six scheduled criminal and civil trials. That includes the ongoing civil business fraud case in New York. T he Georgia defendants will respond to the prosecutors' proposal, and then the Fulton County judge will set a trial date. When asked about the trial schedule, Willis said at a Washington Post event earlier this week that she doesn't "expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025." That would mean the trial would run past the November 2024 election. An August 2024 trial would also mark a year after indictments were handed up in the sweeping racketeering case stemming from a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Four defendants out of 19 have already pleaded guilty. Snippets of videos of those defendants were recently leaked to media outlets, leading the judge on Thursday to issue a limited protective order shielding evidence.
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Post by Webster on Nov 21, 2023 16:05:24 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Judge to rule on Trump co-defendant's bondA judge in Atlanta is hearing arguments on a request to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd, one of former president Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis filed a motion last week telling superior court judge Scott McAfee that Floyd attempted to intimidate and contact likely witnesses and his co-defendants in violation of the terms of his release, the Associated Press reports. Floyd’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that Willis’ allegations are without merit and that the motion is a “retaliatory measure” against their client. Floyd “neither threatened or intimidated anyone and certainly did not communicate with a witness or co-defendant directly or indirectly,” they wrote. Willis was in court Tuesday to present the prosecution’s case. She planned to call three witnesses, including Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia who strenuously defended the legitimacy of the state’s 2020 vote count against Trump’s false claims that the election was fraudulent. The charges against Floyd relate to allegations of harassment toward Ruby Freeman, a Fulton county election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump and his supporters. Floyd took part in a 4 January 2021 conversation in which Freeman was told she “needed protection” and was pressured to lie and say she had participated in election fraud, the indictment says. Four of the original 19 defendants agreed plea deals that include a promise to testify in any trials in the case. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set, but Willis last week asked McAfee to set it for August next year, and warned the case could stretch into 2025.
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Post by Webster on Dec 18, 2023 20:55:04 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Jan 8, 2024 19:34:54 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Attorneys for Donald Trump have filed to have his indictment on charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result dropped by a state court, the Messenger reports. The former president was indicted in August by Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney in the Atlanta-area Fulton county. Here’s more from the Messenger on why Trump’s lawyers say the charges should be dropped: Trump’s attorneys in a 34-page filing attacked the Fulton County indictment on due process grounds by arguing that “the alleged criminal conduct underlying this indictment consists entirely of core political speech at the zenith of First Amendment protections.”
Trump’s attorneys argued that none of the charges the former president faces in the Georgia case “have, in the in the history of Georgia, ever been utilized in a way to address the conduct alleged.”
“As a result,” they said, “President Trump did not have fair warning that his alleged conduct, pure political speech and expressive conduct challenging an election, could be criminalized, particularly since such actions have never before been prosecuted and no President has ever been criminally charged in the 234-year history of the United States of America,” Trump’s legal team argued. “While the statutes underlying this indictment have been in existence for many years, the novel construction the State seeks to now employ violates all notions of due process, particularly since the indictment directly targets pure political speech,” Trump’s attorneys said in the motion to dismiss on due process grounds.
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Post by Webster on Jan 10, 2024 17:57:36 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Fani Willis, Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney who brought election interference charges against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, has been subpoenaed in a divorce case involving a special prosecutor she hired in the Trump case. A process server delivered the subpoena to Willis’s office on Monday, according to a court filing reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the subpoena. The subpoena requests Willis to testify in the divorce case involving her top prosecutor Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade. The Wades filed for divorce in Cobb county, just outside Atlanta, in November 2021, according to a county court docket. The filings in the case have been sealed since February 2022. Earlier this week, Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the election interference case who is facing seven criminal charges, filed a motion accusing Willis and Nathan Wade of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case”. The filing offered no proof of the relationship or of any wrongdoing.
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Post by Webster on Jan 25, 2024 17:03:37 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Alleging 'provocative and inflammatory' comments by Fani Willis, Trump lawyer asks judge to drop charges in Georgia election subversion caseA lawyer for Donald Trump has asked a Georgia judge to drop the charges against his client brought by the Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis, arguing she made “provocative and inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments” in a recent speech. In a court filing, the Trump attorney Steven Sadow also asked for Willis to be removed from the case filed in August of last year against Trump and 18 co-defendants, which alleges they plotted to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory in the state three years ago. Sadow’s argument came after a lawyer for one of Trump’s co-defendants alleged that Willis has a conflict of interest because she has had travel paid for by a special prosecutor she hired for the case, who she was allegedly in an improper relationship with. Sadow joins that filing, while also arguing that Willis made prejudicial comments about Trump during a speech at a Black church in Atlanta on Martin Luther King Day last week. “The DA’s provocative and inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments, made in a widely publicized speech at a historical Black church in Atlanta, and cloaked in repeated references to God, reinforce and amplify the ‘appearance of impropriety’ in her judgment and prosecutorial conduct,” Sadow wrote.
In his argument to have Fani Willis thrown off the Georgia election subversion case and the charges against Donald Trump dropped, lawyer Steven Sadow hones in on comments made by the Fulton county district attorney at church. “I’m a little confused. I appointed three special counsel, as is my right to do. Paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one,” Willis said, during a Martin Luther King Day service at Big Bethel AME Church, a historic Black church in Atlanta. Willis continued, in part: I hired one white woman, a good personal friend and great lawyer. A superstar, I tell you, I hired one white man, brilliant, my friend and a great lawyer. And I hired one black man. Another superstar a great friend and a great lawyer. Oh, Lord, they’re going to be mad when I call them out on this nonsense. First thing they say. Oh, she going to play the race card now? But no. God, isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one? Isn’t it them playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I’ve been doing almost 30 years. God why don’t they look at themselves and just be honest?In a statement to reporters, Sadow said Willis’s “attempt to foment racial animus and prejudice against the defendants in order to divert and deflect attention away from her alleged improprieties calls out for the sanctions of dismissal and disqualification.”
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Post by Webster on Jan 25, 2024 17:04:45 GMT -5
(The Guardian) How did a divorce case lead to allegations of conflict of interest against district attorney Fani Willis that could undercut her indictment of Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 elections? The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has the answer: A Georgia judge on Monday unsealed the divorce case involving a special prosecutor at the center of allegations concerning an improper relationship with the Fulton county district attorney who brought the racketeering case against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The judge also stayed the deposition of the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis in the divorce, until the special prosecutor Nathan Wade – whom she hired for the high-profile Trump case – had first testified about his relationship and financial conditions himself.
Trump’s co-defendant and 2020 campaign elections day operations chief, Michael Roman, has put forward a motion seeking to have the district attorney’s office disqualified from bringing the case because the alleged relationship between Willis and Wade was a conflict of interest.
The judge vacated the consent order sealing the divorce proceeding because no court hearing had been held at the time to shield the records. Roman and a coalition of media organizations, including the Guardian, had separately filed to unseal the case.
The allegations made by Roman threaten to undercut one of the most complex and high-profile criminal cases against Trump that could go to trial before the 2024 election. Trump, who won the Iowa caucuses last week with a 30-point margin, is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
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Post by Webster on Jan 31, 2024 16:44:09 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Fani Willis, prosecutor, subpoenaed to testify on alleged improper relationship in Trump case – report Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis, who indicted Donald Trump and 18 others on charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s election result in 2020, has been subpoenaed to testify regarding her relationship with a prosecutor she hired for the case, ABC News reports. Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for co-defendant Michael Roman, earlier this month accused Willis and Nathan Wade, who she hired to work on the case, of having an improper relationship that resulted in financial gain for both of them. Merchant has asked for Willis to be removed, and the indictment dismissed. Here’s more on what the subpoena means, from ABC News: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, one of her top prosecutors in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and 18 others, have been subpoenaed to testify at an upcoming evidentiary hearing set to examine allegations that they were involved in an improper relationship while investigating the former president, according to a new lawsuit filed in Georgia this week.
The claim that Willis and Wade had been subpoenaed to testify was contained in a copy of the lawsuit, obtained by ABC News, that was filed by the attorney for one of Trump’s co-defendants in the election case, accusing the Fulton county district attorney’s office of “intentionally withholding information”.
The lawsuit accuses the office of “stonewalling” the attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, in her efforts to obtain records from the office through public information requests.
In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for the DA’s office said they had not yet been served the lawsuit, and said, “We provided her with all the materials she requested and is entitled to.” In a letter sent to Merchant on Friday, provided to ABC News by the DA’s office, the DA’s office pushed back on her allegations that they have failed to meet their obligations, writing they “disagree with your disingenuous implication”.
The issuing of the subpoenas could set up a high-stakes battle for both Willis and Wade, who have remained virtually silent on the issue but may now have to testify under oath during the televised hearing on 15 February, as Trump and other co-defendants seek to use the allegations to have the two removed from the case and the indictment thrown out.
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Post by Webster on Feb 15, 2024 22:18:23 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Fani Willis will be called to the stand in hearing in Georgia Trump caseFulton county district attorney Fani Willis is expected to be called to the stand in court in Atlanta, in the misconduct hearing against her and special prosecutor Nathan Wade. We’re not sure when that will happen. Right now, witnesses have been taking the stand, including one now testifying that Willis and Wade began their romantic relationship in 2019, long before they were leading the team prosecuting Donald Trump for charges relating to election interference and racketeering. One of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case is seeking to have Willis and Wade thrown off the case, which would turn the whole thing upside down. Defendant Michael Roman claims their romantic relationship and related expenditure of public funds is a conflict of interest. Judge Scott MacAfee is presiding. This is the first day of what is expected to be a two-day hearing. Georgia prosecutor Nathan Wade takes stand at hearingSpecial prosecutor Nathan Wade has taken the stand in the Georgia hearing. He is wearing a pale grey suit and is being asked about his divorce from his wife. This is relevant in relation to his romantic relationship with Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis. The two are leading the prosecution in the election interference state criminal case against Donald Trump and a slew of co-defendants.
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Post by Webster on Feb 15, 2024 22:24:33 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Fani Willis friend tells hearing DA's relationship with Wade began before he was hiredA friend of Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis testified just earlier in the Georgia hearing in the criminal election interference case against Donald Trump and co-defendants. A former Fulton county district attorney’s office employee, Robin Yeartie, testified that Willis’s personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade began before he was hired in the election interference case against Trump, the Associated Press reports. Yeartie’s testimony directly contradicts Willis’s statement that her personal relationship with Wade didn’t begin until after Wade was hired as special prosecutor in the case against Trump and others. Willis hired outside lawyer Wade to help investigate whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. Wade has led the team prosecuting the case since an indictment was returned last August. Willis’ removal would be a stunning development in the most sprawling of the four criminal cases against Trump. An additional delay would likely lessen the chance that a trial would be held before the November election. He is currently the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination for president.
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