First hearing on the Trump Georgia 2020 election subversion case

Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is asking the state judge in the Georgia election case to halt all proceedings against him until there is a final decision — including appeals — on the bid to move his case to federal court, according to a new court filing Wednesday. 

Meadows is pushing to move his case from state court into federal court in hopes his case will be thrown out under a federal law that protects government employees from facing litigation related to their official duties. A federal judge is still weighing that request. 

In the filing, his attorney makes clear he wants Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to pause the Georgia proceedings until there is a final decision on moving his case to federal court, “including through appeal.” 

Also on Wednesday, at a hearing about two of Meadows’ co-defendants, McAfee asked pointed questions about how it could be “risky” to hold a state trial while there is a federal appeal about moving the case out of state court. 

Meadows is also requesting that his state case be separated from other co-defendants, according to the Wednesday filing.

Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee prioritized judicial efficiency in his ruling today, where he denied Trump co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro's motion to sever his case from co-defendant Sidney Powell and ruled they will go to trial together on October 23, CNN chief legal analyst Laura Coates said.

Coates said the judge looked at three factors:

Coates added that the decision was very quick and "shows that this judge wants to have efficiency really rule the day."

Judge Scott McAfee, the Fulton County judge presiding over the Georgia 2020 election interference case against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, said a trial in the case could take twice as long as attorneys estimated. 

While prosecutors for District Attorney Fani Willis told the judge the trial could take four months, McAfee said he thought “it could easily be twice that,” given the multiple defendants in the case. 

McAfee also made it clear that he planned on sticking with the October 23 trial date for two defendants who had asserted their right to a speedy trial in the case. 

“We're on an expedited timeline with these statutory speedy trial demands,” McAfee said of co-defendants Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro.

The judge added that he plans “to make that October 23 trial date stick” in the case of the two attorneys who previously worked with Trump in the alleged election subversion plot.

Earlier in the hearing, Fulton County prosecutors had pressed the judge to hold one massive trial in their 2020 election subversion case against all 19 defendants. 

Prosecutor Will Wooten leaned heavily into Georgia’s RICO statute to argue that the defendants should be tried together. All 19 defendants were accused of participating in the same criminal enterprise — encompassing several distinct schemes to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat in Georgia — and were charged with violating the RICO law. 

Because it is a RICO case, “all of the evidence is admissible against all of the defendants,” he said. 

Wooten also addressed the defense argument that Chesebro and Powell are charged with different aspects of the alleged conspiracy and therefore should be tried separately. Chesebro is tied to the fake electors plot, while Powell is separately connected to the beach of voting machines in Coffee County. 

“While Mr. Chesebro may have never been to Coffee County, the evidence about Coffee County is evidence that the enterprise existed and shows that the enterprise was working. And because it’s a conspiracy case, Mr. Chesebro is liable for what happened there and it’s admissible evidence,” Wooten said.

Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, co-defendants in the Georgia 2020 election case, will go to trial together on October 23. 

McAfee issued the ruling from the bench during a hearing in Atlanta on Wednesday. The judge has not decided yet whether the other 17 defendants will be also tried at that time. 

“Based on what’s been presented today, I am not finding the severance for Mr. Chesebro or Powell is necessary to achieve a fair determination of the guilt or innocence for either defendant in this case,” McAfee said. 

McAfee said defense lawyers for Chesebro and Powell had not yet met the legal standard needed to separate themselves from one another. 

He also said that two lengthy trials would clog up the court calendar and “inconvenience” jurors. 

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said Wednesday that it “seems a bit unrealistic” that a trial could be held in October for all 19 defendants in the Georgia election case — the timeline Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wants. 

Between the flurry of expected pretrial motions and the ongoing related federal litigation about moving the case out of state court, McAfee was highly skeptical of Willis’ proposal for an October 23 trial for all 19 defendants, including former President Donald Trump. 

The judge questioned whether the timeline was realistic. "It just seems a little unrealistic to handle all 19 (defendants) in 40-something days,” referring to the trial date, currently set for Kenneth Chesebro, who is tied to the Trump campaign’s fake electors scheme.

Willis’ team wants to hold one massive trial for all 19 defendants — not just Chesebro — on that date.

Several of the defendants are seeking to move their case out of state court and into federal court, where they could possibly get the charges dropped under a federal immunity statute.

McAfee pointed out that the federal litigation will likely be appealed, and it could take “months” for a federal appeals court to issue a decision. 

“Where does that leave us in the middle of a jury trial?” he asked, adding, “It’s not easy, and we’ve got less than two months to figure this out.”

Former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell was “not the driving force” behind the breach of voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia, despite evidence put forward by prosecutors in support of allegations she helped coordinate and fund the effort, her lawyer said Wednesday. 

“The evidence is going to show they are incorrect” to accuse Powell of orchestrating the Coffee County breach, her attorney Brian Rafferty said at an ongoing court hearing in Atlanta. “The evidence will show that she was not the driving force behind that.” 

Other pro-Trump lawyers led the charge in Coffee County, Rafferty argued, saying he believes state prosecutors have evidence showing that to be the case. 

The charges against Powell, as outlined in the indictment, all center around her alleged role in the Coffee County breach. 

The indictment accuses Powell of helping initiate the breach as part of a legal agreement with a firm that eventually accessed and copied voting systems in Coffee County. Powell initially contracted the firm to examine voting equipment in Michigan. 

Text messages and invoices cited in the indictment, and previously reported by CNN, link Powell and her non-profit, Defending the Republic, to funding behind the Coffee County breach. 

Powell has pleaded not guilty.

An attorney for pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro said that co-defendant Sydney Powell was fired from former President Donald Trump’s legal team after saying something “crazy.” Chesebro is arguing that his case should be separated from the other 18 co-defendants, including Powell, who is also asking her case be severed.

Manny Arora, who represents Chesebro, argued that his client was not involved in most of the conspiracy alleged by Fulton County prosecutors, framing Chesebro as a more rational actor than other co-defendants, specifically Powell. 

In 2020, Chesebro worked on the Trump campaign’s efforts to undermine the results election. 

Trump announced that Powell was added to his election legal team in mid-November 2020. But, as Arora noted, Powell was let go from Trump’s legal team one week later after she promoted conspiracy theories of an international scheme against the former president. 

Arora said that whatever Powell did later in the alleged conspiracy was “sort of on a lark on her own,” and not connected to Chesebro.

A prosecutor from Fulton County District Attorney’s office said Wednesday that a joint trial for all 19 defendants in the Georgia election subversion case would take about four months.

The trial would include roughly 150 witnesses, and the timeline does not account for jury selection, state prosecutor Nathan Wade said. He emphasized they want to hold a single trial for all defendants.

An attorney for pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, the architect of the Trump campaign’s fake 2020 electors plot, argued Wednesday that he should have a solo trial, without any co-defendants, in the Georgia election subversion case. 

The judge previously set an October 23 trial date for Chesebro and he is considering whether any of the 18 other defendants should go on trial jointly on that day as well. 

Former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell also is seeking an October 23 trial date, but Chesebro attorney Scott Grubman said Wednesday that they should not be combined. He argued Chesebro’s alleged crimes are tied to the fake electors plot and Powell’s case is mostly about the breach of voting machines in Coffee County. 

If there is a joint Chesebro-Powell trial, “you’re going to have two cases in one. You’re going to have days if not weeks — God forbid months — of testimony just related to the Coffee County allegations,” Grubman said. 

Lawyers for Chesebro also said their client should be tried separately from Powell, in part, because the two have never met.

But two co-defendants who have never met can still be part of the same criminal enterprise under Georgia’s racketeering statute, known as RICO, the Fulton County prosecutors said.

“That is not a defense and not a ground for severance,” Will Wooten, a prosecutor with the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, stated plainly during Wednesday’s hearing.

Grubman acknowledged the broad nature of Georgia’s RICO law and that prosecutors are using it to build a conspiracy case against multiple defendants, including former President Donald Trump himself.

“I guess you can say the purpose is to elect Donald Trump president. But if that were the purpose, and a prosecutor could use a purpose of that magnitude to try to tie together charges and defendants that otherwise have nothing to do with each other, then before we know it … literally millions of people could have been charged in this conspiracy," Grubman said.

The argument by Chesebro’s lawyers that he has never met Powell was part of an effort to distance their client from the former Trump attorney, who has also requested a speedy trial on criminal charges stemming from her alleged involvement in a voting system breach in rural Coffee County, Georgia.

Manubir “Manny” Arora, another Chesebro attorney, said the allegations against Powell have “nothing to do with Mr. Chesebro.” There is nothing in the indictment that connects Chesebro to the Coffee County breach, though Powell and Chesebro were both accused of participating in the same criminal enterprise as part of the racketeering charge. 

Chesebro pleaded not guilty and denies devising the “fake electors” scheme. Powell also has pleaded not guilty.