Jenna Ellis, who toured the country with Rudy Giuliani to testify before bodies with false claims about how the 2020 election was stolen from serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), has become the fourth of the 19 people charged with conspiracy to overturn the Georgia results to take a plea deal, with terms similar to the other three.

Jenna Ellis, the lawyer for Donald Trump who was also facing criminal charges for attempted election subversion, is taking a plea deal, pleading guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.

In Fulton county on Tuesday, Ellis became the fourth of 19 defendants to plead guilty as part of the wide-ranging racketeering charges into Trump and allies in the 2020 election in Georgia. Last week, both Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty before their trials were to start. Scott Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman, has also pleaded guilty.
[Read more…]

One of the looniest of serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’ Sydney Powell has agreed to a plea deal with Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, pleading guilty to the racketeering and other charges in her trial that was due to start on Monday. She is the second person to take a plea deal in that wide-ranging case that involved charges against 19 people including SSAT.

Former Donald Trump lawyer Sidney Powell has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case in Fulton county, just days before jury selection for her trial was scheduled to start.

Powell, charged alongside Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia, entered into a plea agreement on Thursday to become the second defendant to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges and cooperate with prosecutors in the sprawling criminal case.

Powell was sentenced to six years’ probation, a $6,000 fine and $2,700 in restitution to the state of Georgia. She will also have to write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia and to testify truthfully at trial – perhaps the most consequential part of the plea agreement.

The move marks a major victory for the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, who secured Powell as a state witness just days before the start of jury selection in her trial. Powell was seen pleading guilty on a live video of court proceedings.

The tangible punishments are negligible though I expect that she will also face disbarment from legal bodies. The key item is her agreement to testify truthfully at SSAT’s trial. Since she is a serial liar and fabulist like her hero SSAT, one has to assume that she has already told prosecutors enough things of value that merited them giving her a slap on the wrist, that she cannot, as a witness, lie any more.

The next person whose trial on racketeering and other charges is due to start on Monday is another SSAT crackpot lawyer advisor Kenneth Chesebro.

The indictment accuses Chesebro of writing memos in early December 2020 suggesting that alternate electors from key states – where former President Donald Trump’s campaign contested the election outcome – could cast votes for Trump, despite the fact he had lost in those states. Chesebro also allegedly helped coordinate logistics of this plan.

He may be the next domino to fall. He only has time until Monday to make a deal.

The Republican serial liar and fabulist congressperson has been hit with even more indictments that greatly expands the range of his alleged crimes to a total of 23. It seems like there was no crime too petty for him if the proceeds could be siphoned to his own bank accounts. His former campaign treasurer Nancy Marks has already pleaded guilty to fraud and is willing to testify agains Santos, which cannot be good news for him.
[Read more…]

This last week saw serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) spend three days in a Manhattan courthouse for the fraud trial brought against him by New York attorney general Letitia James. Since this is a civil case, his presence is not required so I was not sure why he attended instead of playing golf. It may be that since this case deals with his money and properties and where he risks losing much or all of it, the very things that are so dear to is heart, he felt obliged to pay close attention to what was said, though since he has the attention span of a goldfish, it is not clear how much of the proceedings he absorbed.

During the breaks in the court hearings, he would come out and rant to the media about the usual things, that he is being treated so unfairly. But he also complained that he would rather have been in Iowa campaigning and implied that he could not because he had to be in court. This is obviously not true and his lawyers must have told him that so he was clearly lying, though as with so many of his lies, it is hard to see what purpose the lies serve other than give him one more thing to complain about.
[Read more…]

One of the 19 people charged in the Georgia election interference case has pleaded guilty.

Former Republican bail bondsman Scott Hall, one of the 19 people charged alongside Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia, entered into a plea agreement on Friday, becoming the first defendant to plead guilty in the sprawling criminal case.

A live video of the court proceeding showed Hall pleading guilty to five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties, a misdemeanor charge.

Hall was sentenced to five years’ probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service, and to write an apology letter to the state.

This is a relatively light sentence and there are two possible reasons for that. One is that he is a minor figure in the whole operation. The other is that he has agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in return for more lenient treatment. His testimony is thought likely to cause the most harm to Sydney Powell, whose trial is due to start on October 27.

So we now have a real-life, enlarged version of the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma situation. In that problem, two prisoners have to make a decision. If they stick together and do not cooperate with the prosecutors, they increase their chances of escaping punishment altogether by being found not guilty. But if they are found guilty, they will get stiff sentences. On the other hand, if one prisoner cooperates with the prosecutors and betrays the other prisoner, that prisoner can get a light sentence, while the other prisoner gets a heavy sentence.

In this case, because of the large number of defendants, all the other defendants now have to start making more complex calculations. The earlier they plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors, the more likely they are to get light sentences as part of a plea deal. As time goes by, the information that any individual can provide gets less valuable because prosecutors would have got most of what they need from the ones who made deals earlier. So each person has to guess whether their co-defendants will cooperate with the other defendants by staying silent and risking stiff sentences if found guilty or betray them by spilling the beans to prosecutors in return for a lighter sentence.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is thoroughly botching the most important role assigned to it by the US Constitution, that of funding the government. With all the attention focused on that impending disaster, you can be excused for not noticing that that is not all they are bungling. While they play brinkmanship games within their caucus that threaten the livelihoods of vast numbers of people who will be adversely affected by a shutdown, they seem to have the time to waste on pointless activities, such as the impeachment of Joe Biden.

Yesterday saw the opening day of the impeachment inquiry headed by James Comer and it too was a bust, with even their opening witnesses, the people who were supposed to play starring roles, saying that they did not see any evidence on any crimes by Biden.

Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.
…

Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.

[Read more…]

New York’s attorney general Letitia James had brought a lawsuit contending that serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and two officers of his companies Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney and the various Trump organizations engaged in systematic fraud by inflating the value of their properties by outrageous amounts.

New York State Supreme Court justice Arthur Engoron yesterday awarded summary judgment to James on the first and most important claim. This means that the claim was established already and that it did not need to go to trial and the trial could go straight to the penalty phase which will undoubtedly include monetary damages but may also strip the family of control of the properties.

A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved.
…

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations.

If not successfully appealed, the order would strip Trump of his authority to make strategic and financial decisions over some of his key properties in the state.

[Read more…]

The indictments by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis against serial sex abuser Donald trump (SSAT) and eighteen others over their efforts to overturn the election results continues to have fallouts. Last month I wrote about grumbling by some of the other defendants as to why SSAT’s PACs are not paying their legal fees since they were acting in his interest and sometimes on his instructions. I said that this might portend that they might seek to defect from SSAT in an effort to reach favorable plea deals.

It appears that Jenna Ellis, one of the ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’ surrounding SSAT and enabling his fruitless efforts and was one of those complainers, is turning on him

Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes.

“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”
…

“Why I have chosen to distance is because of that, frankly, malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.

“And the total idolatry that I’m seeing from some of the supporters that are unwilling to put the constitution and the country and the conservative principles above their love for a star is really troubling.

“And I think that we do need to, as Americans and as conservatives and particularly as Christians, take this very seriously and understand where are we putting our vote.”

[Read more…]