Trump Co Defendant Kenneth Chesebro Floats New Defense to RICO Charge

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Trump Co-Defendant Kenneth Chesebro Floats New Defense to RICO Charge.
Attorneys for pro-Donald Trump lawyer Ken Chesebro told a Georgia judge on Tuesday that providing "less than two months" of legal advice after the 2020 presidential election does not amount to a racketeering scheme.

Fulton County prosecutors call Chesebro the architect of a plan to send pro-Trump electors to the U.S. Congress in states that Joe Biden won. Along with the former president and 18 other co-defendants, Chesebro stands accused of violating Georgia's RICO statute, and prosecutors allege that the conspiracy involved acts of impersonation, forgery and false statements.

In his latest motion, Chesebro attacks the foundation of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' application of Georgia's RICO statute.

The DA claims that the 19 co-defendants plotted “to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump” between Nov. 4, 2020 and Sept. 15, 2022. But Chesebro argues that the prosecution's timeline fails because any attempt to overturn the election, legally or illegally, would have ended on Jan. 6, 2021.

"In other words, the congressional certification proceeding on January 6, 2021, was the final stage of the presidential election process, and the event
which by statute was to lead to the official declaration of the winner of the presidential election," the 11-page motion states. "There is no legal, statutory, or constitutional authority or other mechanism—whether lawful or unlawful—for changing the outcome of the presidential election once Congress finalizes the result of the election on January 6."

If Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee agrees with that reasoning, DA Willis' racketeering charges could be in trouble because prosecutors must prove that the alleged scheme remained "continuous" over a substantial period of time.

Georgia law does not specify how long that must be, but the U.S. Supreme Court found in the 1989 case of Northwestern Bell that conspiracy of a "few weeks or months" is not enough in a federal case.

"Mr. Chesebro’s total involvement in the matter lasted approximately six weeks," his attorney Scott Grubman wrote, adding that such a time frame would fall "well short of the substantial period of time required to establish close-ended continuity."

On Sept. 7, Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and George Washington University Law School professor, flagged this issue as what he viewed as one of the "problems with the Georgia RICO Charge" against Trump and his co-defendants. He noted that a case out of Georgia's intermediate Court of Appeals, Dover v. State, has been cited for the proposition that the state's statute doesn't require continuity. But Eliason noted the state and federal decision fell roughl