Former Trump campaign lawyer tries to invalidate his guilty plea in Georgia election case

ATLANTA (AP) — Former Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in the Georgia 2020 election meddling case against the president-elect and others, is trying to invalidate that plea.

Chesebro was charged in August 2023, alongside Trump and 17 others, in a sprawling indictment accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. He pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy count a few months later after reaching a deal with prosecutors just before he was to go to trial.

His lawyer on Wednesday asked Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to invalidate the plea after McAfee in September tossed out the charge to which he had pleaded guilty.

“In Georgia, a defendant cannot plead guilty to a charge that does not constitute a crime,” defense attorney Manny Arora wrote, adding that a failure to invalidate his plea would violate Chesebro’s constitutional right to due process.

Representatives for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment on Chesebro’s request.

Prosecutors have said Chesebro was part of a plot to have a group of 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate falsely saying that Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. He pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents related to the the filing of that document with the federal court in Atlanta.

In a September ruling, McAfee wrote that punishing someone for filing certain documents with a federal court would “enable a state to constrict the scope of materials assessed by a federal court and impair the administration of justice in that tribunal to police its own proceedings.” He concluded that the count must be quashed “as beyond the jurisdiction of this State.”

Chesebro was one of four people to plead guilty in the case in the months following the indictment.

The case against Trump and the remaining defendants is mostly on hold pending a pretrial appeal of an order allowing Willis to remain on the case despite what defense attorneys say is a conflict of interest. Even if the appeals court rules in Willis’ favor, the fate of the case against Trump is unclear with his scheduled return to the White House in January.