Latest Georgia ruling is to Trump's 'significant detriment': Ex-prosecutor

A Fulton County judge on Thursday granted pro-Trump attorneys Ken Chesebro and Sidney Powell their requests to sever their charges from the other co-defendants in the Georgia election racketeering case — meaning Trump will not be the first one to stand trial.

That's bad news for him, argued former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on his "Justice Matters" podcast.

First of all, Kirschner said, Chesebro and Powell may have been severed from their other co-defendants, but they failed to get severed from each other. "That's bad" for them, he continued, because "they played different roles in the criminal enterprise that tried to corruptly overturn the results of the Georgia presidential election" — and with them sitting together at the counsel table, jurors will hear a fuller picture of their alleged crimes than they would have if both were separate.

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But more than that, Kirschner argued, this is bad news for Trump as well — because all the other co-defendants will have their crimes listed too, and put on display for the public.

"Fani Willis and her team will come out of the gates strong during this first trial," said Kirschner. "They will prove up the entire conspiracy, what all of the co-conspirators did ... they will prove up Donald Trump's crimes. Why? Because when you are in a criminal enterprise ... all co-conspirators are guilty of all crimes committed by the enterprise."

Therefore, Trump being tried later will be a bad thing for him.

On one hand, Kirschner said, the upside is that he gets to watch the case play out beforehand and "preview the evidence." He recalled how in his own RICO cases, lawyers for defendants not yet tried were sitting in on the courtroom, watching for weaknesses they could "exploit." However, this is "not much of a benefit" because prosecutors will still "prove the entire conspiracy." Moreover, attorneys for Chesebro and Powell will probably "leave alone" facts that incriminate Trump and the other defendants, focusing only on evidence that implicates their own clients — which leaves the Trump allegations undefended, at least in the court of public opinion.

All of this, Kirschner concluded, means that Trump's absence from the first trial will "work to his significant detriment in a number of ways. And that's a good thing. Because justice matters."

Watch the full episode below or at the link.

Judge McAfee rules that defendants Powell & Chesebro will go to trial in October but Trump will notyoutu.be