Trump campaign legal adviser Kenneth Chesebro turned down a plea offer from the Fulton County district attorney’s office in its 2020 election interference case, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News on Thursday.
Chesebro, a lawyer who’s charged with helping create a “strategy for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” is scheduled to stand trial this week. He was initially going to be tried alongside former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, but she unexpectedly entered a guilty plea Thursday morning.
The scuttled Chesebro deal, which was first reported by ABC News, would have seen him plead guilty to a single felony racketeering charge, agree to testify against the other co-defendants in the case, including including former President Donald Trump, and pay a $10,000 fine, in addition to writing a letter of apology. The deal was offered under Georgia’s First Offender act.
In return, Chesebro would have been sentenced to three years of probation and eligible to expunge his record when it was completed, assuming he did not violate any of the terms of his probation.
An attorney for Chesebro and the district attorney’s both declined to comment.
Jury selection for Chesebro’s trial is set to begin on Friday.
A total of 19 people were charged in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling racketeering case alleging conspiracies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Powell on Thursday pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts and agreed to testify in related cases in return for a sentence of six years of probation.
She was the second person to plead guilty in the case. Late last month Scott Hall, who like Powell was facing charges related to a voting system breach in Georgia’s Coffee County in early 2021, became the first to enter a guilty plea in the case, admitting to five misdemeanor charges.
Trump and the other 16 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
