Trump’s first co-defendant pleads guilty in Georgia election interference case: NPR

In this image from a video of Judge Scott McAfee’s virtual Zoom hearing, Scott Graham Hall (left) with his attorney Jeff Weiner (right) stands before Judge McAfee in Fulton County Superior Court on Friday, September 29, 2023, in Atlanta . USA Today via AP, Pool Hide caption

Toggle label

USA Today via AP, Pool

In this image from a video of Judge Scott McAfee’s virtual Zoom hearing, Scott Graham Hall (left) with his attorney Jeff Weiner (right) stands before Judge McAfee in Fulton County Superior Court on Friday, September 29, 2023, in Atlanta .

USA Today via AP, Pool

ATLANTA (AP) — A bail bondsman charged along with former President Donald Trump and 17 others in the Georgia election interference case pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges Friday, becoming the first defendant to agree to a plea deal with prosecutors.

As part of the agreement, Scott Graham Hall will receive a five-year suspended sentence and agree to testify in further proceedings. He was also ordered to write a letter of apology to the citizens of Georgia and was banned from participating in elections.

Hall, 59, pleaded guilty at a surprise court hearing to five counts of conspiracy to intentionally interfere with voting, all misdemeanors. Prosecutors had accused him of participating in a theft of voting equipment in rural Coffee County and initially charged him with racketeering and six counts of conspiracy, all felonies.

He is one of the minor players in the indictment filed last month that accuses him of a wide-ranging plot to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory and keep Republican Trump in power. Still, the settlement represents a major development in the case and marks a victory for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as she pursues a historic racketeering case against a former president.

Hall’s attorney, Jeff Weiner, who was in court with him Friday, said as part of the agreement, his client’s record will be expunged upon completion of his probation. The agreement allows Hall to avoid the stress of “living under a serious felony charge” without knowing when he might be tried, the attorney said in a telephone interview.

“This way it’s over,” Weiner said. “He can sleep well and get on with his life.”

Weiner said Hall didn’t know much about the alleged conspiracy and he would be surprised if prosecutors called him as a witness.

Trump attorney Steve Sadow referred a request for comment on Hall’s plea agreement to Trump spokesman Steven Cheung, who did not immediately respond.

Hall was described in the 98-page indictment as an associate of longtime Trump adviser David Bossie.

The security breach in the county about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta is among the first known attempts by Trump allies to access voting systems as they searched for evidence to support their baseless claims that such devices were used to manipulate the presidential election. Violations followed shortly thereafter in three Michigan counties involving the same people and again in a western Colorado county that Trump won decisively.

Authorities allege the breach began on January 7, 2021, the day after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, and continued over a period of several weeks.

Authorities allege Hall and his co-defendants conspired to provide others with “unlawful access to secure voting machines and voter data.” This included ballot images, voting equipment software and personal voting information that was later made available to people in other states, the indictment says.

Earlier Friday, prosecutor Nathan Wade announced in a separate hearing that prosecutors planned to offer plea deals to attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro. The couple’s lawyers were present at the hearing and did not say whether their clients would accept the offers.

Powell and Chesebro have requested speedy trials and are scheduled to be tried together on October 23, although their lawyers argue that they do not know each other and are not accused of participating in the same acts.

Powell is accused of being involved in a theft of voting machines in rural Coffee County. She allegedly hired and paid a computer forensics team that copied data and software from voting equipment without authorization.

Chesebro is accused of working to coordinate and implement a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate falsely declaring that Trump won and that they themselves were among the “duly elected and qualified” Explain to voters in the state.

Also on Friday, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones rejected requests from four other defendants — former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and three fake voters — to move the charges against them from state court to federal court. He had previously rejected a similar request from Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

The practical impact of moving to federal court would have been a jury pool that covers a wider area and may be more conservative than Fulton County alone, and a trial that would not be photographed or televised because cameras are not allowed in federal courtrooms. But it wouldn’t have opened the door for Trump, if re-elected in 2024, or any other president to issue pardons, since conviction would still occur under state law.

The indictment says Clark wrote a letter after the election saying the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns that may have affected the outcome of the election in several states, including the state of Georgia,” and he asked senior department officials to sign it and send it to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and state lawmakers. Clark knew at the time that this statement was false, the indictment says.

Clark’s lawyers had argued that the actions described in the indictment were directly related to his work as a federal officer at the Justice Department. Clark was assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division and acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at the time.

But the judge said Clark presented no evidence that he was acting within the scope of his role at the Justice Department when he wrote a letter in December 2020 claiming the department was investigating voter irregularities. “To the contrary, the evidence before the court suggests the opposite: Clark’s role in the Civil Division did not include a role in investigating or monitoring state elections,” Jones wrote.

David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham were among 16 Republicans who falsely claimed they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” voters.

Their lawyers argued in court that they were not bogus voters, but rather a “random” list of voters in case the original election results were thrown out by a court. Therefore, the lawyers said, their status as voters meant they were acting as federal officials and fulfilling the duties required by federal law.

Jones said Friday that all three could not prove they were federal officials or acting under the direction of a federal official.

Regarding the claim that they were contingent electors, Jones wrote that even if that were true, “contingent presidential electors are a creation of Georgia state law, not federal law.”