Powell and Chesebro cop guilty pleas, Willis closes in
Donald Trump’s life is a tangle of legal jeopardy so absurd it’s Kafkaesque. But even he knows the final scenes of his absurdist legal drama are now playing out.
Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer criminally charged in Georgia for his role in what prosecutors describe as a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald J. Trump, accepted a plea deal on Friday, becoming the third of 19 co-defendants to plead guilty in the wide-ranging criminal racketeering indictment that also names Mr. Trump.
The plea from Mr. Chesebro, 62, came a day after Sidney K. Powell, another Trump-aligned lawyer charged in the case, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.”
(The New York Times, October 20, 2023)
Powell and Chesebro might be rats jumping a sinking ship. However, only a die-hard MAGA cultist would reject the plea deals Willis offered.
Judge threatens to jail Trump
So, today we saw Chesebro flip on Trump in a Georgia court. That must have unnerved the wannabe Mafia Don. But, mere hours earlier, Judge Arthur Engoron in New York threatened to throw Trump in jail. That must have unnerved him even more.
Trump had “blatantly” violated a gag order by refusing to remove a social-media post mocking the judge’s clerk. His lawyer threw himself on the mercy of the court, all for Trump. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. The judge fined Trump a mere $5,000 — essentially enabling his behavior.
This is why Trump thinks he can get away with anything; i.e., they keep letting him.
Meanwhile, everyone knows he’s like a child who keeps touching the stove no matter how often he’s told not to. And everyone knows it’s only a matter of time before one of the judges presiding over his cases will have to make good on this threat.
Legal vice grip: Willis and James pulling train on Trump
Trump is notoriously chauvinistic and misogynistic. Therefore, the irony should not be lost on anyone that two women are in the vanguard of prosecutors holding him to account. And the irony of ironies is that those two women are Black.
In a blog post on September 24, 2022, I argued that Trump must find this feature of his legal reckoning emasculating.
Sure enough, New York AG Letitia James has already secured a verdict that Trump and his sons are liable for fraud. The same judge who threatened to jail him today summarily revoked his business licenses. That poses an existential threat to Trump’s business empire.
And Fulton County DA Fani Willis has just secured this third guilty plea. That poses an existential threat to Trump’s freedom.
To say this is poetic justice at play resonates beyond words.
Legal and political pundits “stunned”
Legal and political pundits have been all over Cable TV and social media declaiming about Trump’s legal cases. But none predicted Willis would secure these pleas.
Instead, they warned that trying Powell and Chesebro separately could backfire. Because it would give Trump and other co-conspirators a dry run of her case, making it harder to convict them.
Indeed, when news of Chesebro’s plea broke this afternoon, a CNN reporter said it was so stunning you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who predicted it. Well, I did.
On its Facebook page, on September 14, 2023, the Washington Post published a report on the presumed legal quandary Willis faced. I predicted:
Mark my words: DA Fani Willis is going to offer Powell and Chesebro a plea deal they can’t refuse. Because there’s no way she’s going to give the other 17 co-conspirators a preview of her case. She may have to try them in 2 or 3 groups. But, come what may, Willis will ensure that the mob boss, Trump, is in that first group.
Then, on its Threads feed just yesterday, the Washington Post published a report on Powell’s “stunning” plea. I doubled down on my prediction:
Powell down, Chesebro to go… Because DA Willis does not want to preview her case against Trump and others by trying him alone.
So it was said, so it was done. Clairvoyance? Hardly. I simply have no interest in spouting clickbait as legal analysis.
The events in New York and Georgia courts today spell doom for Trump. However, I’d be remiss not to mention Jack Smith, the white prosecutor pulling train with Willis and James.
Smith will be the first to get a crack at Trump due to docket scheduling. While two white men and one white woman are presiding over three of his four major cases, the judge in Smith’s case is also a Black woman, Tanya Chutkan.
Thanks to docket scheduling, Smith will get the first crack at trying Trump on criminal charges. Two white men and one white woman are presiding over three of his four major cases. But the judge presiding over Smith’s case is, you guessed it, a Black woman, Tanya Chutkan.
Let poetic justice roll down like waters.