By Jessie Seigel/October 29, 2023

The dominoes appear to be falling.
In the space of six days, attorneys Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis all took plea deals in the Georgia racketeering case against former president Donald Trump and his multitudinous co-defendants. (Powell pleaded guilty on October 19, Chesebro one day later, and Ellis on October 24.)
According to the terms of their deals, not one of the three is receiving even a moderate penalty for their own legal sins. Maybe Trump should seek a sweetheart deal to testify against himself.
The Conspiracy Roles of the Three--and the Deals They Obtained

Sidney Powell posing for her Fulton County mugshot
Sidney Powell was a prominent Trump spokesperson appearing on Fox News multiple times to push the lie that the Dominion Voting machines, used in more than half the nation, were flipping votes in the computer system, or adding votes that did not exist.
But Powell went even further. According to Slate, she allegedly was deeply involved in a conspiracy to steal and breach voting machine software in Coffee County, Georgia, in order to further the scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Consequently, Ms. Powell was charged with violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, two counts of Conspiracy to Commit Election Fraud, Conspiracy to Commit Computer Theft, Conspiracy to Commit Computer Trespass, Conspiracy to Commit Computer Invasion of Privacy, and Conspiracy to Defraud the State.
Despite her involvement in these plots to overthrow the election, Powell got a plea deal under which she was allowed to plead guilty to a mere six misdemeanors, will only serve six years of probation, pay a $6,000 fine, and write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. All she has had to do in exchange is record a statement for prosecutors and agree to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.

Kenneth Chesebro obtained a very generous plea deal from the state of Georgia
Kenneth Chesebro was originally charged with seven felony counts for his central role in
the conspiracy to create slates of fake electors for Donald Trump in Georgia and several other states won by President Biden—another important part of the illegal scheme to keep Trump in power despite his loss of the 2020 election.
Specifically, according to the New York Times, Chesebro's indictment alleged he coordinated and executed a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate falsely declaring that Trump won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
He also wrote a memo that “detailed, state-specific instructions for how Trump presidential elector nominees in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin would meet and cast electoral votes” for Trump—states in which Trump clearly had lost.
In addition, Chesebro conspired with Trump and Trump campaign lawyers to get Georgia Republicans to submit the false elector certificate to various federal authorities. To top all this off, in an email to Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani, Chesebro outlined strategies to disrupt and delay the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, during which electoral votes were to be certified.
Nevertheless, Chesebro managed to get a deal in which he only pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents, agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and to testify at trial. According to the Times, this would include testimony against Trump and other co-defendants, including Giuliani and several other top Trump aides.
In exchange for this largesse, Chesebro only has to serve five years of probation, pay $5,000 in restitution, perform 100 hours of community service, and write a letter of apology to the people of Georgia. (Apparently, he has already written the letter.)
Best of all, for Chesebro, if he successfully complies with these terms, the case will be officially sealed, leaving him without a criminal record. Talk about a get out of jail free card!

While pleading guilty at her October 24 court appearance, Jenna Ellis wept.
Jenna Ellis pled guilty to a single felony charge, that she participated in an effort to make false statements to Georgia lawmakers about election fraud.
In her public statement before the court, Ellis acknowledged that she helped supply and support the Giuliani big lie that nearly 100,000 mail-in ballots were fraudulently cast, that 2,500 felons illegally voted, that over 60,000 underage people illegally registered to vote, and that more than 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia's 2020 presidential election.
Though Ellis is 38 years old and has been practicing law for over 10 years, in her court statement, she seems to have gotten away with portraying herself as an ingenue attorney who had relied on lawyers “with many more years of experience than I to provide me with true and reliable information.” She claimed that her fault was not making sure that information was true. She said, “If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges.”
But Ellis’s role was far greater than allowing herself to be misled. According to Politico, she “was a fixture alongside Giuliani as they pressed state lawmakers to credit the claims of election fraud.” She also drafted memos circulated among Trump allies supporting the illegitimate argument that Vice-President Pence had authority to refuse to count Biden’s electoral votes.
Jenna, poor baby, cried as she recited her actions in court. But what does she have to cry about? The deal she got only requires her to cooperate with prosecutors in future proceedings, serve five years of probation, pay a mere $5000 in restitution and, like Powell and Chesebro, write a letter of apology. Plus, according to Politico, the fact that prosecutors are not considering the offense to which she is pleading guilty “a crime of moral turpitude,” may help her avoid disbarment. So, hers is a small price to pay for trying to overthrow democracy.
How Will These Deals Affect the Battle to Keep American Democracy Intact?
It is understandable that Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis would provide plea deals to some Trump henchmen in order to obtain valuable testimony against the man at the top and other central co-conspirators—like John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Rudolph Giuliani, and Mark Meadows—who may be seen as the most important defendants.
But these deals? That contain barely a whisper of accountability? In which these also central architects of the attempted coup receive no real penalty at all?
Have we as a nation learned nothing from our history?
In 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned former president Richard Nixon, who had resigned to avoid impeachment--before Nixon could even be tried or convicted of his crime. Thus, Nixon paid no price other than temporary humiliation for his 1972 Watergate attack on our democracy.
Nixon’s White House counsel John Ehrlichman, White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, and Attorney General John Mitchell were all convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury. But their jail sentences were slaps on the wrist. Ehrlichman and Haldeman each served 18 months in prison. John Mitchell served 19 months. And Nixon’s special counsel, Charles Colson, served only seven months.
When Richard Nixon got away with no legal penalty, and his henchmen paid no real price for their crimes, anti-democratic forces in this country saw what they could get away with. And little by little, from Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal to Newt Gingrich’s right-wing efforts to Dick Cheney’s championing of the “unitary presidency” theory—the nation was led to the dangers it faces today.
In 2022, John Dean, a Nixon lawyer who had testified against Nixon in Congress, echoed this historical sensibility, telling The Guardian: “It’s very hard to look at Watergate without looking through the lens of Trump where it didn’t work, or hasn’t yet. It’s not over. If Trump gets through with zero accountability, then the system is deeply flawed and a lot of that is probably traceable to the Ford pardon.”
Dean added, “Trump is a poster boy for authoritarianism and the authoritarian followers just fell in line. They just absolutely did what authoritarian followers do: click their heels, salute, ‘Yes sir!’”
Stopping Trump’s authoritarian ambition is urgent--but it is not, by itself, the end to the problem. The rest of his cadre of co-conspirators must be held accountable as well or they will feel free, led by some other demagogue, to try again.
I agree that making plea deals with these defendants was appropriate and likely necessary to obtain needed testimony. And second-guessing Georgia DA Fani Willis’s decision on the terms of those deals may amount to Monday morning quarterbacking of the prosecutor-defendant negotiations of which I have no knowledge.
Nevertheless, letting Powell, Chesebro, and Ellis off the legal hook by copping to charges that are minimal compared to what they actually did—with no jail time, comparatively miniscule fines, and the possibility of resuming their legal careers as if they had done nothing—undermines any deterrence to future coup attempts. The penalties in these feeble plea deals won’t even discourage current efforts by Trump’s minions in Congress and elsewhere to complete the coup that failed on January 6. Such an untowardly generous deal could, rather, serve as an inducement to keep trying. It may well further endanger democracy.
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