Before they pleaded guilty in Fulton County’s wide-ranging election subversion case, four onetime Donald Trump allies recorded testimony with prosecutors.
Video of those interviews were provided to attorneys to the remaining defendants in the case as part of pre-trial discovery. Known as proffers, such testimony is a preview of what witnesses might testify at trial.
Portions of the videos were obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other media outlets this week.
Here are the key takeaways from the videos:
Jenna Ellis
Comments Ellis made about an interaction she had at a White House Christmas party could help speak to the plans of the former president and those of the people around him.
On Dec. 19, 2020, Ellis, then senior legal adviser for the Trump campaign, ran into senior Trump aide Dan Scavino, who thanked Ellis for her work.
“I said something to him, like, ‘I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to do more,’ and I emphasized to him I thought the claims and the ability to challenge the election results was essentially over because of the dismissal of the Texas v. Pennsylvania case from the United States Supreme Court,” she told Fulton prosecutors, according to video obtained by The AJC.
“And he said to me in a kind of excited tone, ‘Well, we don’t care and we’re not going to leave.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, the boss,’ meaning President Trump — everyone understood the boss, that’s what we all called him — he said, ‘the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.’
“And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize.’ And he said, ‘We don’t care.’”
Frank Hogue, one of Ellis’ attorneys, declined to comment. Ellis assisted attorney Rudy Giuliani as he made numerous false election fraud claims to Georgia lawmakers at a December 2020 hearing. She pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.
Sidney Powell
After the 2020 election, Trump briefly considered appointing attorney Powell as a special prosecutor to investigate voting fraud. Powell told prosecutors she would have sought the seizure of voting machines had she been appointed special counsel.
“I would have looked at putting into effect a provision of (a draft executive order) that would have allowed the machines to be secured in four or five states or cities and see about doing a bipartisan or military, or whatever everybody agreed on, review of the machines forensically,” Powell said, according to a video recording obtained by The AJC.
Powell told prosecutors that Trump’s advisors dissuaded him from naming her a special counsel. At one meeting, she said attorney Rudy Giuliani “called me every name in the book” and said “I was the worst lawyer he’d ever seen in his life.”
Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts for her role in a Coffee County election data breach.
Powell said she still believes the 2020 election was stolen - and that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger may have been involved. When asked why two Republicans would illegally help Democrat Joe Biden become president, Powell suggested they may have benefitted from voting fraud.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re not supposed to be the governor and the secretary of state,” Powell told prosecutors in the video. “What if it was rigged for them to begin with? What if 2016 was rigged for Trump? The problem is, we don’t know as long as we have these blooming (voting) machines.”
Numerous recounts and investigations found no widespread voting fraud in the 2020 election.
Kenneth Chesebro
Chesebro told prosecutors about his interactions with co-defendant and fellow attorney John Eastman. Both were architects of Trump’s plan to use Republican presidential electors in states Biden won to overturn the election in state legislatures and in Congress.
Chesebro said he disagreed with Eastman’s contention that the mere existence of competing slates of electors could empower Vice President Mike Pence to reject the official Biden electors in Georgia and other states on Jan. 6. Chesebro said he assumed Trump would have to prevail in one of his numerous court challenges first.
In the video interview with prosecutors, Chesebro said that as Jan. 6 approached, he had no idea Eastman was planning to meet with Pence. In that meeting, Eastman reportedly tried to persuade the vice president to reject the Biden electors.
“I thought he was just analyzing (legal options) and providing input,” Chesebro told prosecutors. He said Eastman “didn’t tell me something that I kind of wished I’d known – that he was actually meeting with the vice president.”
Chesebro pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.
Chesebo said he was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, in case the Trump campaign needed him, he said. He mingled in the crowd outside the Capitol and briefly chatted with conservative radio personality Alex Jones. But he said he did not witness violence or condone the riot.
“It was the worst possible thing that could happen, because we wouldn’t get the debate (about voting fraud in Congress) that we had tried to set up,” he told prosecutors in the video.
Scott Hall
Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts for his role in the Coffee County data breach. But he told prosecutors he was just a “political tourist,” according to his testimony, obtained by The Washington Post.
Hall said he spent $10,000 of his own money on a private jet to travel to Coffee County on Jan. 7, 2021, to watch an Atlanta tech firm copy election information. He complained that no one reimbursed him.
Hall also revealed his role in the alleged harassment of Fulton County poll worker Ruby Freeman, who was falsely accused of voting fraud. According to the Post, Hall told prosecutors that codefendant Bob Cheeley, an attorney, asked for his help in locating Freeman - probably because of his bail bondsman experience in tracking people down. It was unclear if he did help with Freeman.
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff's Office
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