Former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro filed a motion Wednesday to have his indictment on alleged 2020 election interference in Georgia dismissed.
Chesebro, along with former President Trump, is among 19 co-defendants who were indicted by a grand jury on racketeering and other charges related to attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election.
Chesebro’s request comes three weeks before he and another former Trump attorney, Sidney Powell, both of whom requested a speedy trial, are set to be tried together on October 23, separate from the 17 other co-defendants.
His motion alleges that Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who was brought in by District Attorney Fani Willis to help investigate the case, didn’t file the oath of office required to join the proseuction’s legal team.
The filing asserts that Wade filled out the oath of office paperwork, but did not file it as required by law until just last week, an error that Chesebro’s attorney, Scott Grubman, says makes Wade’s work “void as a matter of law.”
According to Grubman, in the state of Georgia it’s a misdemeanor crime to “take an actions as a public officer without first taking and filing the appropriate oaths.”
Former Georgia prosecutor Chris Timmons has countered that the practice of using special assistant district attorneys is “routine” in the state, and while the error would be “embarrassing” for the state “at worst,” it’s not a blow to the entire indictment.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s office has declined to comment on the case.
Chesebro’s charges in the case are related to his having drafted official memos suggesting the use of so-called “alternate electors” to prevent then-President-elect Biden from receiving 270 electoral votes in the 2020 election.
His defense team has acknowledged that he drafted the memos at the center of his alleged conduct, but say his actions were justified since Chesebro was “fulfilling his duty to his client as an attorney.”
