Donald Trump was one of 19 people originally indicted in Fulton County in August 2023 on racketeering and other charges related to efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in Georgia.
In the 17 months that have elapsed since Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis unveiled the indictment at a late-night news conference in Atlanta, some of Trump’s allies have been actively fighting the charges against them while others have kept a low profile.
While the bulk of the attention has centered on Trump, here’s a look at what some of his co-defendants have been up to:
GUILTY PLEAS: Lawyers Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, along with Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall, entered guilty pleas earlier this year after striking deals with prosecutors. The four all avoided prison time.
Ellis’ plea was the most dramatic; she wept in court as she apologized.
In a videotaped interview with Fulton prosecutors in October 2023, Powell said she still believed the 2020 election was stolen. She is also battling a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Powell claimed, without evidence, that their voting machines were rigged.
Chesebro filed a recent motion — swiftly rejected by the Fulton judge overseeing the case — to invalidate his plea.
RUDY GIULIANI: The former New York City mayor has been mired in messy court battles around the country. In 2023, a federal jury in Washington, D.C., ordered Giuliani to pay $148 million to Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who he falsely accused of fraud. Since then, Giuliani has been scolded by a federal judge in Manhattan for missing deadlines to hand over possessions, like a vintage Mercedes-Benz convertible, to the women.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Recently, Giuliani, Trump’s onetime personal lawyer, said he was broke and could not find a lawyers to represent him. He faces another trial in January as Freeman and Moss seek to obtain his Florida condo, and he has continued to repeat phony claims against the women despite being ordered not to.
DISQUALIFICATION EFFORT: A lawyer for defendant Michael Roman launched the push to disqualify Willis and her office in a January court filing that accused her of a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the outside lawyer she hired to lead the election interference case. Trump and seven other defendants joined the effort. They included Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, former Georgia GOP chair David Shafer and former Coffee County Republican Party chair Cathy Latham.
REMOVAL TO FEDERAL COURT: Five of the defendants have tried to move their cases to federal court, where they could have faced a more favorable jury pool than heavily Democratic Fulton County. None have succeeded. Meadows took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear his appeal. The others who also made unsuccessful efforts to transfer their cases were Clark, Shafer, Latham and Shawn Still, who is now a state senator.
DISBARRED: Eight of the original 19 defendants were lawyers, and many of them have faced some type of disciplinary action since 2020.
John Eastman’s California law license was suspended. Giuliani was disbarred in New York and Washington. Chesebro had his law license suspended in New York. Ellis agreed to a three-year suspension of her law license in Colorado. Powell has, so far, avoided sanctions. Citing clerical errors in a filing from the disciplinary panel of the State Bar of Texas Commission, an appeals court rejected the penalty they had proposed for her. Clark is battling the recommendation from a Washington, D.C., disciplinary panel that he lose his law license for two years,
Georgia lawyers Bob Cheeley and Ray Smith have faced no disciplinary actions so far.
ADDITIONAL CHARGES: Three other battleground states have also brought criminal charges against some of the Georgia defendants as part of larger prosecutions targeting Trump electors.
Giuliani, Eastman, Meadows and Ellis were indicted in Arizona. As she did in Georgia, Ellis has agreed to cooperate with Arizona prosecutors. Chesebro and Roman were charged in Wisconsin.
HARRISON FLOYD: The former leader of Black Voices for Trump was initially one of the most outspoken Fulton defendants, regularly taking to social media to rail against the case and solicit funds to help pay for his defense. Prosecutors earlier this year asked a judge to revoke Floyd’s bond because they said some of those posts threatened other defendants in the case. Floyd avoided a return to jail, and in March he received approval to work for the Trump campaign.
Floyd has reined in his social media posts about co-defendants, but he has remained highly critical of Fulton DA Willis, celebrating the appeals court’s ruling ousting her from the case. He was among the spectators at a February hearing in Fulton County where Willis testified in a bid to avoid being disqualified.
THE OTHERS: Like Floyd, Trevian Kutti was in the Fulton County courtroom when Willis battled back against allegations she had an improper relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. And on social media, Kutti also reveled in the appeals court decision to remove the DA from the case.
The Chicago publicist has also offered commentary on pro-Trump news outlets.
Misty Hampton has kept a low profile since the Fulton indictment was announced. But she drew scrutiny when it emerged that soon after she was forced out of her job as election supervisor in Coffee County, she had been hired to run a special election in Treutlen County. After learning of Hampton’s involvement in Truetlen, state officials confiscated the election server there as part of an ongoing investigation into interference into the 2020 vote.
Illinois pastor Stephen Lee has flown below the radar since he became the last of the 19 defendants to surrender at the Fulton County Jail in August 2023.
This story has been updated to reflect Floyd’s last name.
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