Jack Smith

In a column for MSNBC, ex-federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner claimed former Donald Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell may have received sweetheart plea bargain deals from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, but they can expect special counsel Jack Smith to play hardball with them if he moves to indict them.

As of right now, the two disgraced lawyers are unindicted co-conspirators in Smith's Washington D.C. case against Donald Trump being heard by Judge Tanya Chutkan, but that could change after they made admissions of guilt about the 2020 election in a Georgia courtroom.

With that in mind, Kirschner wrote the two could shed a tremendous amount of light on attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election by the former president and his close associates, and that he will likely demand more than Willis in return for leniency.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

"Neither Powell’s nor Chesebro’s plea deal ends the possibility of imprisonment," Kirschner wrote.

He continued, "As noted earlier, they’ll still face criminal exposure in the federal case. The Georgia prosecutors might have been willing to extend a probation-only plea deal to Powell and Chesebro. But I doubt the federal government will be quite so generous."

According to the former prosecutor, he is of the mind that they each should face some real jail time in light of their actions trying to subvert democracy.

The surprise announcement that former Donald Trump lawyer Kenneth Cheebro has agreed to a plea deal in his Georgia racketeering case is a "serious threat" to the former president and his legal team which may be faced with seeing one of their key Jan. 6 defense strategies be made null and void.

According to a report from the New York Times, Chesebro's deal raises the possibility that he can become a star witness in special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution that is getting underway in Washington, D.C. under the eye of Judge Tanya Chutkan.

As the report notes, Chesebro was the author of a multitude of emails with the former president's other lawyers and those will be fair game for the prosecution making the case that Trump knew he lost the elections and was making efforts to stay in office nonetheless.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

Central to the Trump defense in the Jan. 6 indictment is a reported plan to claim the former president was given bad advice at the time of the insurrection that led him to believe he had a legal case to contest the election results.

According to the Times report, "If Mr. Chesebro were to testify that Mr. Trump’s lawsuits challenging his loss were not designed to win, but merely as ploys to sow doubt about the election, it could cut against Mr. Trump’s possible plan to use a so-called advice of counsel defense. That strategy involves blaming one’s lawyers for giving bad advice."

Conservative lawyer Kenneth Chesebro became the third Donald Trump co-defendant to plead guilty in the Georgia racketeering case, and legal experts agree that's bad news for the former president and his allies.

Chesebro admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents, but will avoid prison time because he agreed to cooperate with investigators, which could move them closer to Trump and his inner circle including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

In a deep dive comparing the judges overseeing the two federal indictments filed against Donald Trump, a legal expert noted that Judge Aileen Cannon's Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case is moving at a snail's pace compared to Judge Tanya Chutkan's.

According to the Wall Street Journal report, Chutkan has been quick to make rulings on motions from both sides, while days go by before Cannon either calls a hearing or finally makes a ruling.

One of the revelations from Sidney Powell's hearing on Thursday is that her agreement relates to cooperation on all "state" charges – leaving federal charges against those accused of election interference off the table, an expert said.

Andrew Weissmann, the former senior prosecutor under special counsel Robert Mueller, assumed that meant federal prosecutor Jack Smith wasn't willing to work with Powell.

Michigan fake elector James Renner has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, according to the Associated Press.

Renner was among the 16 Republicans hit with charges including forgery following an ongoing investigation by Attorney General Dana Nessel. Now he will have the criminal charges dropped in exchange for an agreement to cooperate with the investigation.

Donald Trump has been slapped with gag orders limiting his comments on witnesses and others involved in his trials for civil fraud and inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, but a legal expert said those restrictions are unlikely to prevent the former president from provoking violence.

The ex-president faces tremendous peril from criminal prosecution and potentially ruinous lawsuits, and his rhetoric has grown more menacing as his days of courtroom reckoning have arrived, wrote author Jeffrey Toobin in an op-ed for the New York Times with the headline "Donald Trump is Going to Get Someone Killed."