Fani Willis offers new plea deals to several Trump co-defendants
October 03, 2023
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is offering a new round of plea agreements for several low-level co-defendants charged as part of the election racketeering conspiracy case against former President Donald Trump, reportedThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday.
According to the report, "at least a handful" of the 18 co-defendants in the case have been offered agreements. Among those is Michael Roman, Trump's director of operations in Georgia, and some of the people "who were indicted for their alleged roles in the appointment of a slate of Trump electors, election data breach in Coffee County and harassment of Fulton poll worker Ruby Freeman."
At least two of those offers were informal and didn't offer specifics, according to the report.
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This comes after Willis secured her first successful plea agreement with Scott Hall, a bail bondsman charged with the Coffee County breach scheme, taking a guilty plea — which could potentially open up a new line of cooperation against some of Trump's associates.
Several others are planning to take the charges to trial, with Trump-aligned attorneys Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro successfully moving for their cases to be severed and heard first, independently of the former president and the other defendants.
George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf said that what happens next depends on the kind of people Willis' prosecutors can secure deals with. “One is how early (defendants) come in and the other is how important are they,” he told AJC. “Obviously Rudy Giuliani is much more useful than, say, one of these electors.”