Trump co-defendant files motion to dismiss charges in Georgia election case over 'alleged paperwork error'
Attorney Kenneth Chesebro is among the many Donald Trump allies who has been indicted as a co-defendant in Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' criminal case against the former president and 2024 GOP presidential primary frontrunner.
Willis alleges that Trump and others she is prosecuting violated RICO laws in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and keep Trump in the White House despite the fact that he lost to now-President Joe Biden. Chesebro, according to Willis, drafted legal memos that proposed using "alternate electors" in the hope of giving electoral votes that Biden legitimately won to Trump.
Chesebro's trial is scheduled to begin on October 23. But ABC News reports that Chesebro's attorney, Scott Grubman — in a court document filed on Wednesday, October 4 — is asking for the charges against him to be dropped because of an alleged paperwork error by Nathan Wade, who Willis' office hired as a special prosecutor in the case.
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Chesebro's legal team alleges, in the court document, "Nathan Wade, who has and continues to serve as lead counsel in this case — including during the presentment of the case to the criminal grand jury and at the time the underlying indictment was returned — was not an authorized public officer by Georgia law."
"In the filing," ABC News' Olivia Rubin explains, "Chesebro's attorney urged the judge not to let the alleged paperwork error be 'chalked up to mere technical noncompliance' — warning that it is an error that may rise to a criminal violation. Former Georgia prosecutor Chris Timmons, however, said that the practice of using special assistant district attorneys is 'routine' in the state, and that 'at worst,' the error would be 'embarrassing' for the state — but not a blow to the entire indictment.
Read ABC News' full report at this link.
