OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The first co-defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ cases involving former President Donald Trump has entered a plea of guilty in a deal made with the top prosecutor.
“Bail bondsman Scott Hall on Friday became the first defendant in the Fulton County election interference case to take a plea agreement with prosecutors, signaling the probe has entered a dynamic new phase,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“During an impromptu hearing before Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, Hall, with his attorney by his side, pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties,” the outlet noted further.
“Hall agreed to testify truthfully when called, five years probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service and a ban on polling and election administration-related activities. He also recorded a statement for prosecutors and pledged to pen a letter of apology to Georgia voters,” the AJC added.
The plea deal is seen as a huge win for Fulton County prosecutors, the paper noted, as they prepared for at least two sets of trials that involve the remaining 18 co-defendants, one of whom is Trump. The first two defendants to go on trial are Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro; that trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 20.
Trump and 18 others have been charged with conspiring to overturn Georgia election results. His legal team was expected to try to get his case moved out of state court and into federal court, where attorneys are likely to seek dismissal of the charges under the guise that Trump is immune because he was acting in an official capacity. But that strategy appears to have changed now, according to a report this week.
Meanwhile, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig has warned that one major flaw in the indictment is that Trump and many of his allies could try to move the trial, taking the case out of Georgia’s heavily liberal county, though former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ attempt was unsuccessful.
“The other big issue – and we just said this word – is removal. Get ready for a lot of talk about removal. Mark Meadows is already trying to do this. Donald Trump will try to follow. In a nutshell, what this means is, if a federal official gets charged with a state crime that relates to that federal official’s official job duties, you can get the case removed.”
Honig argued that such duties must be “within the legitimate scope of those jobs,” adding that is “an important qualification. He [Trump and others] can get the case moved over to federal court and then potentially dismissed. So, these are really important motions. Mark Meadows has already done this, Trump is sure to follow.”
“The hard part [is] it’s a lot of work. You’re not going to be able to try all 19 at once. That’s not going to happen. And you just never know how every one of these defendants, let’s put aside Trump. Every one of these defendants, even the people we heard of, is going to mount a furious defense, as is their right to do,” Honig said.
“They all work together as one cohesive entity towards an illegal end,” Honig said. “You have the advantage to pick off some low-hanging fruit and get them to flip.”
A new analysis of Willis’ sprawling indictments against Trump and the rest of the co-defendants may prove to be too heavy of a lift for her in the long run.
A. R. Hoffman, an associate editor for the New York Sun, noted this week that an allegation made by former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, one of the indicted — that “serious constitutional concerns” have been raised over her prosecution of him — “could upend District Attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling racketeering case before it achieves liftoff.”
