Trump lawyers in for a surprise at sentencing after half-baked apologies: ex-prosecutor

Two Trump lawyers who took plea agreements, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, could face a revocation or harshening of their plea deals — or at the very least, a reprimand from the court — over their unrepentant behavior, former federal prosecutor Shan Wu suggested on Friday's edition of MSNBC's "All In."

This comes after Powell and Chesebro, who were ordered to write apology letters as part of the terms of the deal for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, wrote terse, one-line statements that barely apologized for anything.

"First of all, in your experience doing this kind of thing, is it common for someone on a plea to give such an obviously truculent F you to the entire proceedings in their apology?" asked anchor Chris Hayes.

"No, this is like the 'I'm sorry you're ugly' kind of apology," said Wu. "It's ridiculous. It's very transparent. Usually, the defendant wants to take that moment to convince the judge, who is going to sentence them, that they are genuinely remorseful, and they have learned something from this. In this case, it really seems that the defendants don't have that concern at all ... honestly, if I were that judge, I wouldn't even accept that is having given an apology. The prosecutor should take the same tactic. It should be like a schoolteacher saying, go back and try again."

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"That was going to be my next question," said Hayes. "I think this is wholly unacceptable on a bunch of different levels. First of all, these are wealthy, privileged, affluent people, who are getting to do a thing that hundreds of thousands of Americans who are run through the police system every month in this country don't get to do. But also, because stating that you were wrong about the specifics of what happened is important for the country's civic health, and a huge part of why this is a meaningful prosecution. You are saying the judge can be like, not good enough, try again?"

"I think so," said Wu. "I don't know that a judge could say the plea deal was off because of this, but if part of the plea deal is the apology, I think the judge can say, hey, you are not fulfilling that aspect of the plea deal. Obviously, the reason here for an apology, in lots of cases people will get convicted without an apology, just like what you're saying, the critical point here is the harm done to the public, and to our system, and the acknowledgment is really critical. Too often there is this built in bias in favor of — because there's not a violent crime, they get treated more lightly. These folks use, just like you're saying, their prestige, their power, to abuse the system and hurt the country. And they really do need to be held accountable for that."

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