Former President Donald Trump's legal adviser Kenneth Chesebro was left with no choice but to cut a deal, wrote Jennifer Rubin for The Washington Post on Monday.
"What became of Chesebro’s arrogant insistence he could not be prosecuted for giving 'legal advice'?" wrote Rubin, a former conservative turned anti-Trump political commentator. "Simply put, Chesebro lost critical pretrial motions that made this defense practically impossible."
The fatal blow, wrote Rubin, was that Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee denied Chesebro's bid to exclude memos in which he outlined an illegal plot to stand fake electors in key battleground states — memos that are essentially evidence that the pro-Trump attorney knew what he was doing was illegal.
Chesebro argued that they were bound by attorney-client privilege, but as McAfee pointed out, that doesn't apply when attorney communications are the whole foundation of a case centering on whether an attorney broke the law.
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Moreover, Rubin continued, "Chesebro stood at risk of having other arguments barred," as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis made a series of motions to exclude other defenses.
"Chesebro wanted to argue that he lacked the requisite intent needed to convict because he believed his own legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence could throw out electors for Joe Biden. He also wanted to put a legal expert on the stand to testify to the merits of his crackpot legal theory" — and there was a real chance the judge could reject all of that, leaving Chesebro with essentially no way to defend his actions.
The bottom line, she wrote, is that Chesebro was left without any other option — and the clock was ticking as his co-defendant, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, had just accepted a deal herself.
"In any event, we can expect Willis, with a total of three plea deals, to return to court, seek trial dates for remaining defendants and then ramp up pressure to snare more cooperating witnesses," concluded Rubin. "Even Trump must recognize she’s on a roll."
