Judge rejects an attempt by Trump campaign lawyer to invalidate guilty plea in Georgia election case

ATLANTA -- The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and others on Friday rejected an attempt by former Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro to invalidate his guilty plea.

Chesebro, Trump and 17 others were charged in August 2023 in a sprawling indictment that accused them of participating in a sweeping scheme to try to illegally overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Chesebro 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 t his month 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. Defense attorney Manny Arora wrote that a failure to invalidate the plea would violate Chesebro's constitutional right to due process.

McAfee's order denying that request said the motion was procedurally defective "in more ways than one.” He ultimately said he lacks jurisdiction to grant the request and therefore dismissed it.

He noted that while Chesebro's filing challenges the validity of the indictment, he “already submitted a plea in response to this indictment — one of guilt.” While Chesebro did raise a pretrial challenge prior to his plea, he did not make the argument that ultimately caused the judge to throw out that charge.

Arora had also argued in his filing that his request could be considered a “motion in arrest of judgment." But McAfee said that, technically, no judgment has been rendered against Chesebro because he was sentenced under Georgia's First Offender Act, which “defers further proceedings while the charge remains pending for the duration of the sentence.” Under that law, if Chesebro completes his probation without violating the terms or committing another crime, his record will be wiped clean.

The request is also too late, McAfee wrote, because a motion in arrest of judgment must be filed during the term when a judgment is entered.

Arora said that he had addressed McAfee's concerns in his motion but that the judge still found that he could not grant the request. He said he will file a habeas corpus motion, a civil proceeding used to challenge a conviction, and expects to get Chesebro's plea invalidated that way.

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.

Chesebro was one of four people to plead guilty in the case in the months following the indictment. The rest have pleaded not guilty.

The case against Trump and the remaining defendants is mostly on hold pending a pretrial appeal of an order allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani 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 since he is set to be sworn in again as president next month.