Lawyer for Trump Co-Defendant Admits Leaking Videos

UPDATE Nov 16, 2023 2:00 AM CST

The release of video statements from four defendants who pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case led to quite an uproar, with prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case demanding to know how the videos got out, the Hill reports. Turns out the lawyer of another defendant in the sweeping case leaked them: "In being transparent with the court and to make sure that nobody else gets blamed for what happened—and so that I can go to sleep well tonight—Judge, I did release those videos to one outlet," said Jonathan Miller, an attorney for defendant Misty Hampton, at a hearing. The move was not illegal since there was no protective order in place, but the judge in the case said he would issue an order protecting certain evidence in the case by Thursday morning, NBC News reports.

Nov 14, 2023 1:30 AM CST

Video statements from the four defendants who've accepted plea deals in the sweeping Georgia election interference case have been obtained by ABC News and the Washington Post, and they reveal new details about the months following the 2020 presidential election. One quote in particular is grabbing attention: A former lawyer for Donald Trump, Jenna Ellis, recalled telling Dan Scavino, then Trump's deputy chief of staff, that Trump's options for challenging the election outcome were diminishing. "And he said to me, you know, in a kind of excited tone, 'Well, we don't care, and we're not going to leave.' And I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said 'Well, the boss', meaning President Trump—and everyone understood 'the boss,' that's what we all called him—he said, 'The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.' And I said to him, 'Well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize?' and he said, 'We don't care.'"

• ABC News has more on Ellis' statement, as well as that of attorney Sidney Powell, who admitted in hers, "Did I know anything about election law? No." She also explained how she planned to seize voting machines, and described one "really ugly" meeting with Rudy Giuliani, another defendant in the case, in which he "called me every name in the book and (said) I was the worst lawyer he'd ever seen in his life."
• Trump and 18 others named in the case have pleaded not guilty, and in the Washington Post's story on the videos, it notes that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is known for using the state's expansive anti-racketeering statute to cast a wide net of indictments, then accept more and more plea deals in order to gather incriminating evidence related to the remaining defendants. The Post also has more from the statements of lawyer Kenneth Chesebro and Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall.

(More Georgia indictment stories.)