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Trump co-defendant trying to separate his case from Sidney Powell proceedings: ‘No correlation or overlap’

September 2, 2023 | | Print Article

Former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro has effectively disavowed co-defendant Sidney Powell, making it clear he wants nothing to do with her.

As previously reported, both Chesebro and Powell were hit with a RICO-related indictment in Georgia last month related to their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, following the indictment, both “demanded their cases be split off from their other co-defendants and quickly taken to trial.”

A judge reportedly approved Chesebro’s request last week, but then Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis requested that Powell, Chesebro, and anybody else who wants a speedy trial be tried together.

“In Willis’ view, the defendants should be tried jointly because they all, to varying degrees, participated in a racketeering scheme and, according to her indictment, ‘knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,'” Rolling Stone notes.

Chesebro was reportedly not pleased by this.

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“In a Friday filing, Chesebro’s attorneys ‘respectfully’ requested the court ‘sever his trial from defendant Sidney Powell.’ The filing … argues that Powell’s actions are both separate and unrelated to the actions taken by Chesebro in the aftermath of the election. In an ordered list, attorneys attempted to detail how little contact the pair have had,” according to Rolling Stone.

Below is that list:

  1. “Mr. Chesebro has never physically met Sidney Powell;
  2. Mr. Chesebro has never sent an email to Ms. Powell;
  3. Mr. Chesebro has never received an email from Ms. Powell;
  4. Mr. Chesebro has never called Ms. Powell;
  5. Mr. Chesebro has never received a phone call from Ms. Powell;
  6. Mr. Chesebro has never texted Ms. Powell;
  7. Mr. Chesebro has never received a text message from Ms. Powell; and
  8. Mr. Chesebro has never communicated with Ms. Powell through any social media or telecommunications application.”

The filing reportedly further argues that there’s “a danger that evidence incriminating one defendant will be considered against a co-defendant, or if the strength of the evidence against one defendant will engulf the co-defendant(s) with a spillover effect.”

“Simply put, if Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell are forced to be tried together, the State will attempt to lump them together in an attempt to convict Mr. Chesebro via a ‘conspiracy’ or ‘RICO’ theory based on the conduct of the co-defendant which has no relation to anything for which he stands accused,” the filing reads.

So what did Chesebro do in the first place? As also previously reported, he penned a Dec. 6th, 2020 memo in which he “laid out a plot to use false slates of electors to subvert the 2020 election,” according to The New York Times.

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Prosecutors have described the memo as a plot to set up “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.”

What’s key about this memo is that in it Chesebro “acknowledged from the start that he was proposing ‘a bold, controversial strategy’ that the Supreme Court ‘likely’ would reject in the end,” the Times notes.

In other words, he allegedly knew he was toying with the truth. But he did it anyway to “focus attention on claims of voter fraud and ‘buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column,’” the Times reported, quoting from the memo.

“It seems feasible that the vote count can be conducted so that at no point will Trump be behind in the electoral vote count unless and until Biden can obtain a favorable decision from the Supreme Court upholding the Electoral Count Act as constitutional, or otherwise recognizing the power of Congress (and not the president of the Senate) to count the votes,” Chesebro wrote.

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The plan specifically called for false electors to file their votes on Dec. 14th, 2020, and for then-Vice President Mike Pence to later count the false electors’ votes rather than the official ones on Jan. 6th.

Chesebro further reportedly recommended the Dec. 14th meeting be portrayed as “a routine measure that is necessary to ensure” that the correct electoral slate would be counted by Congress. And since the meeting would be controversial, he also recommended it be held behind closed doors.

Critics say his prosecution is unfair and unjust given how many times Democrats have themselves tried to use false electors to win an election.

Vivek Saxena
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