A Fulton judge on Friday rejected an attempt by one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Fulton County election interference case to strike the plea deal he made with prosecutors.
Kenneth Chesebro, a Harvard-trained attorney, pleaded guilty more than a year ago to one count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents in connection with his role in the plan to use Republican presidential electors to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia and other swing states.
That plea deal allowed him to avoid jail time and have his criminal record wiped after successfully completing a five-year probation period as a first offender.
But in September, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee struck three counts from the indictment, including the one to which Chesebro pleaded guilty.
Chesebro’s attorney Manny Arora subsequently asked McAfee to void his client’s plea agreement, citing the judge’s decision. Arora had quoted a federal appeals court decision that found that “nowhere in this country can any man be condemned for a nonexistent crime.”
But on Friday, McAfee rejected Arora’s request. He wrote that the attempt was “procedurally defective in more ways than one.”
Chesebro’s “invoked remedy is entirely inapt,” McAfee wrote in a brief order, which noted that his trial currently lacks jurisdiction over the matter and that it thus must be dismissed.
McAfee concluded that Chesebro’s request came more than a year too late. He said that Chesebro had already submitted a guilty plea in response to that indictment. Not only that, but he noted that Chesebro had raised a pretrial challenge in fall 2023, but that it didn’t include the argument that ultimately led to McAfee tossing the charges.
Arora said he understood why McAfee felt like he didn’t have jurisdiction and that he planned to file a civil habeas corpus petition soon so that the plea deal could be properly reviewed.
Chesebro was initially charged with seven felony counts in the racketeering case. He and co-defendant Sidney Powell had requested speedy trials, but hours before jury selection was set to begin in October 2023 each struck a plea agreement with the DA’s office.
In September 2024, McAfee nullified three counts from the indictment, which all involved alleged false statements made to a federal court, because they “lie beyond this state’s jurisdiction” under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. That included Count 15, to which Chesebro pleaded guilty.
Count 15 alleged that Trump, Chesebro and a handful of other campaign attorneys and aides mailed a certificate to a federal judge in December 2020 making the “materially false statement” that it contained votes from duly qualified Republican electors from Georgia, even though Biden had been declared the winner of the state’s 16 Electoral College votes.
The election interference probe is the last active criminal case involving Trump. But the bulk of it remains on hold as the Georgia Court of Appeals considers whether to remove Willis and her office from the case due to her onetime romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the outside attorney she had hired to manage the prosecution. A ruling is expected before mid-March.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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