'Every defendant for himself': Trump’s onetime allies are turning on him

05 September 2023

Former President Donald Trump's indicted associates "are starting to reveal glimmers of a tried-and-true strategy in cases with many defendants: Portray yourself as a hapless pawn while piling blame on the apparent kingpin," Politico's Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney report.

"Trump allies who are facing or could have faced jeopardy in connection with three of his four pending criminal cases have shown that they might follow" ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen's precedent of "every defendant for himself," Gerstein and Cheney write.

"It's not uncommon for co-defendants facing serious prison time to point fingers at each other to make themselves look less culpable to an eventual jury," they note. "But rarely has it played out in such an extraordinary fashion, where the alleged ringleader is a former president."

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For instance, the attorney representing Trump's final White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — who "arranged" the now-infamous phone call in which Trump [allegedly] told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to "find me 11,780 votes" — had "emphasized that his client’s part in the actual discussion was both more minor and less provocative than Trump's," Politico explains.

This "strategy," Gerstein and Cheney continue, is simple: "If a jury primarily blames Trump for the events that played out in the aftermath of the 2020 election, the lower-profile co-defendants may seem less culpable by comparison."

This was demonstrated by members of the Proud Boys like David Moerschel, who "was convicted by a jury, along with three other defendants, of seditious conspiracy earlier this year. But in a related trial, which included Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — the alleged ringleader of the seditious plan to overthrow the government — the jury returned a much more nuanced verdict that heaped most of the blame on Rhodes."

Rhodes' defense lawyer Scott Weinberg told Politico that "they don't want the little guys, they want Trump. You're always compared to who you’re next to."

In another example identified by Politico, "David Shafer, Cathleen Latham, and Shawn Still — recently said in court filings that nearly all of the charges they face were the result of instructions from Trump and his lawyers" to "pose as pro-Trump presidential electors, signing documents claiming they were Georgia's legitimate electors" after President Biden carried the state's sixteen Electoral College votes. "In legal filings seeking to transfer their prosecutions into federal court, they all indicated that they took that step at Trump’s 'direction.'"

Per Gerstein and Cheney, "The false electors scheme plays a key role in both the Georgia indictment and the separate federal case in which Trump is charged with conspiring to overturn the election. Trump's campaign attorneys, acting at Trump's behest, urged Georgia Republicans to assemble and sign paperwork falsely claiming to be presidential electors. The attorneys said the effort would salvage Trump's litigation to reverse the election results. But after those efforts failed, Trump pointed to the slates of false electors as part of an effort to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally overturn the election results."

The correspondents add that "Meadows made clear in his own testimony at last week’s hearing that Trump viewed the false electors as a significant part of his strategy to remain in power. He said he sent an email pushing the campaign to assemble those slates because he feared a tongue-lashing from Trump."

Gerstein's and Cheney's analysis is available at this link.

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