John,

News in the Georgia case against Donald Trump just keeps coming. Over the last five days, three of the lawyers who allegedly worked with Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election have pleaded guilty, and are now cooperating with prosecutors.

• Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer, pleaded guilty today to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements. Ellis admitted to peddling lies to Georgia lawmakers in December 2020.
• On Thursday, Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit election interference. Powell widely promoted election conspiracy theories and attended a December 2020 meeting with Trump and several others to strategize about challenging election results.
• On Friday, Kenneth Chesebro also pleaded guilty to one felony: conspiracy to commit filing false documents. Chesebro was a key player in the “fake electors” plot to falsely deliver electoral votes in seven states (including Georgia) to Trump instead of Biden.

The fact that four of the 19 defendants charged in the Georgia election lawsuit have now pleaded guilty is quite significant.

John,

A Georgia grand jury has indicted Donald Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia — but the charges didn’t stop there. The grand jury also handed District Attorney Fani Willis indictments on 18 of Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in the “criminal enterprise” including Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows.

This is now Trump’s fourth indictment this year. Each has been for serious crimes, from campaign finance crimes, to putting our national security in peril, to conspiracy to defraud the United States and deprive Americans of their civil rights in pursuit of keeping himself in power after losing an election.

This indictment stands for the principle that serious violations of the law demand serious accountability—and that extends beyond the big names (Trump, Meadows and Giuliani) to the foot soldiers who allegedly took action on the ground to overturn the results of the election.

Making this indictment all the more significant: no president could pardon Trump for a conviction in Georgia, or command Georgia prosecutors to drop the case.

Georgia was central to Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election, and the facts have been established for quite some time:

• On Election Day 2020, Trump announced that it was “clear that [he had] won Georgia,” despite the vote count not being finished
• Trump alleged that military ballots in Georgia were “missing,” when they were not
• Trump publicly targeted Georgia election officials, including calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “an enemy of the people” at a press conference
• Trump falsely claimed that poll workers in Atlanta had hidden “suitcases” full of Biden ballots, and then counted them more than once
• Trump and his surrogates including his chief of staff Mark Meadows inundated Georgia residents and officials with disinformation, and had Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman pressure the Georgia legislature to ignore the state’s popular vote (all of these people were also indicted yesterday in Georgia)
• These election lies and the pressure campaign led to harassment and death threats against two Georgia poll workers, as well as Raffensperger and his family
• Then, Trump’s team recruited and organized a group of Georgia residents to serve as fake electors, to purportedly cast the state’s 16 Electoral College votes for Trump even though the state’s actual electors had cast those votes for Biden
• And finally, Trump called Raffensperger to pressure him to “find” 11,780 votes, the exact number needed to flip the state’s vote tally, even appearing to threaten him with criminal prosecution if he did not

The indictment lays out the criminal conspiracy’s breadth and danger, which go far beyond even the points we just laid out here.

It’s hard to overstate the damage that would have been done to our democracy if our country had let that extraordinary pattern of conduct go unchecked. It cannot be a happy day to see a former president facing a racketeering indictment, but for the good of our country, yesterday was a positive one.

Donald Trump violated both federal law and Georgia law with his scheme to overturn the 2020 election. We filed a criminal complaint laying out his and Meadows's violations of Georgia law on January 4th, 2021, two days before Trump’s scheme to overturn the election culminated in the attack on the Capitol.

Accountability for Donald Trump’s crimes may have been slow to come, but now it has come with a vengeance.

Convicting Trump and his allies of these crimes will not be easy, despite the staggering evidence in support. We’ll keep you updated on all of the important developments in the coming weeks and months.

Thank you,

Noah Bookbinder
President
CREW