Attorney Kenneth Chesebro, alleged mastermind of the illegal “fake electors” plot launched by a frenzied Trump team in an attempt to keep the defeated former president in office, just cannot catch a break.
The Massachusetts-based lawyer was handed his latest loss in court on Friday, when Judge Scott McAfee handed down a blistering order denying an audacious attempt by Chesebro to get his indictment in the sprawling racketeering case dismissed outright due to an apparently trifling paperwork error. Chesebro’s attorney Scott Grubman filed a Hail Mary pass of a motion on Wednesday, claiming that Fulton County Special Assistant District Attorney Nathan Wade, who was specially selected by District Attorney Fani Willis to help prosecute the case, was late in submitting the appropriate paperwork necessary to formalize his appointment.
Citing an obscure section of the Official Georgia Code, the motion deemed Wade’s participation thus far in the case “void as a matter of law.” The indictment in Fulton County against Trump, Chesebro, and 17 other co-defendants over the hamfisted attempts to reverse Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results, was filed on Aug. 17. Wade, however, didn’t hand in his signed oath of Special Assistant District Attorney until Sept. 27, following an inquiry from Grubman.
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“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,” Chesebro’s motion states.
It accuses Wade of committing a misdemeanor by presenting the case to a grand jury and obtaining an indictment “without first taking and filing the appropriate oaths.”
“Accordingly, the indictment in this case must be dismissed,” the filing states.
On Friday, McAfee systematically dismantled Chesebro’s latest attempt to duck accountability, making legal mincemeat out of the 62-year-old’s reasoning in less than 900 words.
In the order, McAfee noted that Chesebro, like Wade, filed his motion after the official deadline. However, McAfee said he allowed an exception and decided to address the merits anyway “because the motion is so easily dispatched.”
To begin with, McAfee said Chesebro’s motion “fail[ed] to establish that this code section is even relevant to Special ADA Wade.” The Georgia Code states that the requirements in question do not apply to those tasked to work on specific cases, rather than being sworn in on a general assignment. But, McAfee wrote, Chesebro’s motion noted this exception, “then blithely move[d] on without adequately explaining why it should not apply.”
The smackdown continued apace, lambasting Chesebro for citing the appropriate stipulation but leaving it “tucked away in a footnote with only the unsupported assertion that ‘prosecuting a criminal case is one such specially declared situation.’”
“The Court has not been provided, nor located, any authority to support this claim,” according to McAfee’s order.
McAfee then schooled Chesebro and his attorney on the “‘de facto’ officer theory recognized early in our Supreme Court’s existence,” which holds that anyone who “exercises the duties of an office under color of an appointment or election to that office” is indeed considered to be an officer, in practice. The validity of this “is so well settled that it is embodied in the [Georgia] Code,” and even without filing his oath at all, Wade’s work on the case to this point “would nevertheless be valid.”
“And if this parrot of a motion is somehow not yet dead,” McAfee goes on, “the Defendant has failed to establish how Special ADA Wade’s actions resulted in prejudice, i.e., how his assignment singlehandedly changed any specific actions taken during the investigation or resulted in the true bill of indictment… Nor has Defendant established a constitutional violation or structural defect in the grand jury process sufficient to justify outright dismissal.”
And so, McAfee writes, “The motion is DENIED.”
Chesebro has been handed a steady stream of defeats in court, beginning with his demand in August for a speedy trial. While Willis had suggested a start date of March 2024, Chesebro invoked his right to stand trial within weeks of his indictment, “the legal equivalent of throwing a bomb into the proceedings and gambling that Willis wasn’t ready,” Tamar Hallerman, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter covering the proceedings, wrote on Twitter. In response, Willis appeared to call Chesebro’s bluff and suggested a lightning-fast trial date of Oct. 23.
Chesebro has since been unable to separate himself from co-defendant Sydney Powell, who aped Chesebro’s speedy trial ploy. Powell, the seemingly unmoored Trump election attorney who has been described as “a complete nut,” a “lunatic,” “a fucking nutcase,” and “even crazier than you think,” was immediately yoked to Chesebro, who then tried desperately to avoid being paired with her at trial.
As has now become routine, his gambit didn’t work.
Late last month, Chesebro unsuccessfully floated a new defense, arguing he couldn’t have possibly been part of a broad, overarching conspiracy because he only advised Trump “for approximately six weeks.” (The RICO charges still stand against all of the defendants; Powell tried the same thing and on Thursday was unceremoniously shot down.) On Sept. 29, McAfee also rejected Chesebro’s flailing attempt to have incriminating emails thrown out as evidence, along with his laughable assertion that he is not a criminal suspect because he was never sent a target letter.
“Defendant must know better,” McAfee wrote in his order rebuffing Chesebro’s claim.
Scott Grubman did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Friday.
