Prosecutors have said Chesebro, an attorney, worked with Republicans in numerous swing states Trump lost, including Georgia, in the weeks after the November 2020 election at the direction of Trump’s campaign. Chesebro worked on the coordination and execution of a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate declaring falsely that Trump won and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
A look at the 19 people charged in the Georgia indictment connected to Trump's election scheme
- KATE BRUMBACK and JONATHAN J. COOPER Associated Press
- Updated
- 0
Donald Trump. Rudy Giuliani. Mark Meadows, and more. A look at the 19 people charged in the 2020 election meddling scheme in Georgia.
Key people in the Georgia election fraud case
Four of the 18 people charged alongside former President Donald Trump with participating in an illegal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia have now negotiated deals with prosecutors, pleading guilty to reduced charges in exchange for their truthful testimony in future trials.
Lawyer Jenna Ellis on Tuesday became the latest to turn against Trump, pleading guilty to a single felony charge in exchange for a sentence of probation rather than prison time. Fellow attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro reached similar deals last week, just as their trial in the case was supposed to start because they had invoked their rights to a speedy trial. Bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall last month was the first to plead guilty.
Trump and the others charged in the case have pleaded not guilty.
The sweeping indictment, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, pictured, in August, capped an investigation that had lasted more than two years and marked the fourth criminal case brought against the former president. Its 41 counts include racketeering, violating the oath of a public officer, forgery, false statements and other offenses.
Here’s a look at the 19 people charged:
AP Photo/John Bazemore, FileDonald Trump
Then-President Trump fixated on Georgia after the 2020 general election, refusing to accept his narrow loss in the state and making unfounded assertions of widespread election fraud there. He also called top state officials, including Gov. Brian Kemp, to urge them to find a way to reverse his loss in the state. In a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump suggested the state’s top elections official could help “find” the votes needed for him to win the state. Willis opened the investigation into possible illegal attempts to influence the election shortly after a recording of that call was made public.
AP fileRudy Giuliani
During several legislative hearings at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney promoted unsupported allegations of widespread election fraud in Georgia. Prosecutors have said Giuliani was also involved in a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans serve as fake electors, falsely swearing that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
AP fileJohn Eastman
Eastman, one of Trump’s lawyers and a former dean of Chapman University's law school in Southern California, was deeply involved in some of his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election. He wrote a memo arguing that Trump could remain in power if then-Vice President Mike Pence overturned the results of the electoral certification during a joint session of Congress. That plan included putting in place a slate of “alternate” electors in seven battleground states, including Georgia, who would falsely certify that Trump had won their states.
AP fileMark Meadows
Trump’s chief of staff visited Cobb County, in the Atlanta suburbs, while state investigators were conducting an audit of the signatures on absentee ballot envelopes in December 2020. Meadows obtained the phone number of the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, Frances Watson, and passed it along to Trump, who called her. He also participated in the Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
AP fileSidney Powell
A lawyer and staunch Trump ally, Powell was present for a now-infamous December 2020 meeting at the White House where participants hatched far-fetched schemes. She also was part of a group that met at the South Carolina home of conservative attorney Lin Wood in November 2020 “for the purpose of exploring options to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere,” prosecutors said. Additionally, prosecutors alleged Powell was involved in arranging for a computer forensics team to travel to rural Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, to copy data and software from elections equipment there in January 2021.
AP fileJeffrey Clark
A U.S. Justice Department official who championed Trump’s false claims of election fraud, Clark presented colleagues with a draft letter pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session on the election results, according to testimony before the U.S. House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Clark wanted the letter sent, but Justice Department superiors refused.
AP fileJenna Ellis
The lawyer appeared with Giuliani at a Dec. 3, 2020, hearing hosted by state Republican lawmakers at the Georgia Capitol during which false allegations of election fraud were made. Ellis also wrote at least two legal memos to Trump and his attorneys advising that Pence should “disregard certified electoral college votes from Georgia and other purportedly ‘contested’ states” when Congress met to certify the election results on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors said.
AP fileCathy Latham
Latham was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. She was also chair of the Coffee County Republican Party. She was at the county elections office for much of the day on Jan. 7, 2021, and welcomed a computer forensics team that arrived to copy software and data from the county’s election equipment in what the secretary of state’s office has said was “unauthorized access” to the machines.
Coffee County, Georgia via APKenneth Chesebro
Ray Smith
A Georgia-based lawyer, Smith was involved in multiple lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. He also gathered witnesses to provide testimony before Georgia legislative subcommittee hearings held in December 2020 on alleged issues with the state’s election.
Robert Cheeley
A Georgia lawyer, Cheeley presented video clips to legislators of election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta and alleged the workers were counting votes twice or sometimes three times. He spoke to the lawmakers after Giuliani.
Michael Roman
A former White House aide who served as the director of Trump’s election day operations, Roman was involved in efforts to put forth a set of fake electors after the 2020 election.
Shawn Still
He was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. Still was the finance chairman for the state GOP in 2020 and served as a Georgia delegate to the Republican National Convention that year. He was elected to the Georgia state Senate in November 2022 and represents a district in Atlanta’s suburbs.
Stephen Cliffgard Lee
Prosecutors say Cliffgard Lee, a pastor, worked with others to try to pressure Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter after Trump and his allies falsely accused them of pulling fraudulent ballots from a suitcase during the vote count. Lee allegedly knocked on Freeman’s door, frightening her and causing her to call 911 three times, prosecutors said in a court filing last year.
Harrison William Prescott Floyd
Also known as Willie Lewis Floyd III, he served as director of Black Voices for Trump, and is accused of recruiting Lee to arrange a meeting with Freeman and Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti.
Trevian C. Kutti
Prosecutors allege Kutti, a publicist, claimed to have high-level law enforcement connections. They say Freeman met with Kutti at a police precinct, where she brought Floyd into the conversation on a speakerphone. Prosecutors say Kutti presented herself as someone who could help Freeman but then pressured her to falsely confess to election fraud.
Scott Graham Hall
An Atlanta-area bail bondsman, Hall was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County, a small south Georgia jurisdiction. Also charged in the scheme were Powell, Latham and former county elections supervisor Misty Hampton.
Misty Hampton
She was the elections director in Coffee County. Hampton was present in the county elections office on Jan. 7, 2021, when a computer forensics team copied software and data from the county’s election equipment. She also allowed two other men who had been active in efforts to question the 2020 election results to access the elections office later that month and to spend hours inside with the equipment.
Read the Trump indictment in Georgia
Related to this collection
Trevian Kutti is one of the 18 people indicted with Donald Trump in the alleged Georgia 2020 election conspiracy. She denies wrongdoing.
Larry L. Divis of Columbus was found guilty of one count of election falsification, a Class IV felony.
She sought to deflect blame amid mounting criticism from Trump and others who seized on the blunder to characterize the case as rigged.
Rudy Giuliani, once named Time magazine’s person of the year after the 2001 terrorist attack, has seen his reputation eviscerated for his steadfast defense of former President Donald Trump.
The witness provided new information that implicated the former president, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
A judge on Monday set a March 4 trial date for Donald Trump in the federal case charging the former president with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting a defense request to push back the case by years.
Donald Trump is flooding the airwaves and his social media platform with distortions, misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories. Here are the facts about Trump's loss in the last presidential election.
Lawyers indicted with Trump say they were doing their jobs. But that may be a tough argument to make
The 18 defendants charged alongside former President Donald Trump in this month’s racketeering indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, include more than a half-dozen lawyers. Several of them have signaled that they were merely doing their jobs as attorneys when they maneuvered on Trump’s behalf to undo the results of that election.
Election workers have gotten death threats and warnings they will be lynched, the US government says
Most cases haven't brought charges from prosecutors, who point to the high legal bar for criminal prosecution.
Prosecutors accusing former President Donald Trump and 18 others of an illegal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia still want all of the defendants tried together.
Trump won't be tried with Powell and Chesebro next month in the Georgia election case, a judge rules
Lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro filed demands for a speedy trial, which is set to begin Oct. 23.
Past high-profile trials suggest additional scrutiny and stress for the four judges overseeing the indictments against former President Donald Trump. But the challenge facing Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee in Georgia is unlike any of the others.
Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell cut deals last week with prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, agreeing to plead guilty and cooperate instead of face trial in the indictment that charged them, the ex-president and 16 others with illegally plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
Attorney and prominent conservative media figure Jenna Ellis has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Ellis is the fourth defendant in the case to enter into a plea deal with prosecutors.
The judge says Trump violated a limited gag order barring personal attacks on court staffers.
Wednesday's courtroom drama previews the tensions mounting between Donald Trump's competing legal and political interests as he vies for the Republican presidential nomination while facing a litany of criminal and civil cases.
Trump in a social media post late Sunday acknowledged the gag order was back in place, calling it "NOT CONSITUTIONAL!"
Minnesota Supreme Court dismisses ‘insurrection clause’ challenge and allows Trump on primary ballot
The court dismissed a lawsuit citing a rarely used “insurrection” clause that sought to prevent Trump from running for the White House again.
The probe adds to official scrutiny of so-called fake electors in several swing states won by President Joe Biden in 2020.
Election security experts and computer scientists are warning that 2020 voting system software breaches among allies of Donald Trump have “urgent implications for the 2024 election and beyond.”
Trump's vow to only be a dictator on 'day one' follows growing worry over his authoritarian rhetoric
Donald Trump's assertion that he would only be a dictator on “day one” of a second term comes as he is facing growing scrutiny over his increasingly authoritarian and violent rhetoric.
Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Donald Trump indicated their desire to invoke the 2016 election in the former president's trial on charges of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The U.S. District Judge agreed to pause any “further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant.”
Fani Willis has alleged that Trump, lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others participated in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election results after voters elected Democrat Joe Biden as president.
Apology letters by Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro in Georgia election case are one sentence long
Apology letters Donald Trump-allied lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro had to write as part of their plea deals in the Georgia election case came in at just one sentence long.
A jury has awarded $148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation over lies he spread about them in 2020.
A jury awarded $148 million in damages Friday to two former Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation over lies he spread about them in 2020 that upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.
Federal agents raided Rudy Giuliani's home and office in 2021 because they suspected the former New York City mayor sought the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Donald Trump touts his transformation of the U.S. Supreme Court as one of his presidency's greatest accomplishments. Now his legal and political future may lie in the hands of the court he pushed to the right.
Rudy Giuliani filed for bankruptcy Thursday, acknowledging financial strain exacerbated by his pursuit of Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election and a jury's verdict last week requiring him to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers he defamed.
Trump asks US Supreme Court to review Colorado ruling barring him from the ballot over Jan. 6 attack
Former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn a ruling barring him from the Colorado ballot, setting up a high-stakes showdown over a constitutional provision prohibiting those who "engaged in insurrection" from running for office.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis defended her hiring of Nathan Wade but has not directly denied a romantic relationship.
The strategy underscores the extent to which Trump views his four criminal cases as battles to be won not just in a courtroom but in the court of public opinion.
The filing keeps on hold what would be a landmark criminal trial of a former president while the nation’s highest court decides what to do.
Fani Willis’ removal over a potential conflict of interest would be a stunning development in the most sprawling of the four criminal cases against Trump.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis took the witness stand Thursday and forcefully pushed back against what she described as "lies" about her romantic relationship with a special prosecutor during a hearing over misconduct allegations.
Cellphone location data is raising questions about when the romantic relationship between Trump prosecutors Fani Willis and Nathan Wade actually started, contradicting testimony in the election interference case.
An appeals court has halted the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump while it reviews a ruling allowing Fani Willis to remain on the case.
