Attorney Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty in Fulton County Superior Court Friday to illegally participating in an attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results.
Chesebro admitted working with Republican then-President Donald Trump and others to recruit Georgia Republicans to act as “fake” electors in asserting that Trump defeated Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia in 2020 when in fact Biden carried the Peach State’s 14 electoral votes.
Specifically, Chesebro pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. Under the plea agreement, he will serve five years of probation, pay $5,000 in restitution, perform 100 hours of community service, write an apology letter to Georgia citizens, and testify truthfully at future court hearings and trials.
Chesebro was the second defendant in the Georgia racketeering case against Trump and 18 co-defendants to plead guilty this week. Another former lawyer for the Trump campaign, Sidney Powell, pleaded guilty Thursday to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties for her role in tampering with election equipment in Coffee County in January 2021.
TOO MANY ADS? GO AD-FREE
Did You Know?: The ads you see on this site help pay for our website and our work. However, we know some of our readers would rather pay and not see ads. For those users we offer a paid newsletter that contains our articles with no ads.
What You Get: A daily email digest of our articles in full-text with no ads.
A 41-count indictment handed down by a Fulton County grand jury in August charges Trump and his co-defendants under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act with conspiring to convince high-ranking state and federal officials – including then-Vice President Mike Pence – to throw out the Electoral College results in Georgia and a half dozen other swing states that voted for Biden and declare Trump the winner.
A group of Republican electors recruited by Chesebro and others met at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020 and declared Trump the winner in Georgia. At the same time, the actual electors who had been chosen by Georgia voters the month before were meeting on the floor above to certify Biden the winner in Georgia.
Unlike the other defendants in the case, Chesebro and Powell had requested speedy trials. The two guilty pleas avoided a trial that had been due to begin Friday with jury selection.
One other defendant, Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall, pleaded guilty last month. Hall was tied by prosecutors to the Coffee County tampering case.
