Looks Like The Decision Is In To Throw Sidney Powell Under The Bus

Ready For The MAGA Version Of "The People's Court" Meets "Divorce Court?"

You Can't Say Trump Has Been Indicted 3 Times Anymore

Yesterday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis began presenting her election interference, racketeering case against Trump and his co-conspirators to the grand jury. RICO cases are complicated and usually take a couple of days to present to a grand jury. It didn't this time. Last night, Trump and 18 of his cronies (including Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis) were indicted in Atlanta on 41 counts—from racketeering to perjury and conspiracy to commit forgery. Trump immediately started sending out fundraising e-mails to the rubes. Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello in the federal case, said he won’t be representing him in the Georgia case. Although the indictment spells out 161 separate acts that prosecutors say were taken to further the alleged criminal conspiracy, Willis’ indictment charged that Trump and his cronies obstructed the election in 8 overarching ways:

• lying to the Georgia state legislature

• lying to state officials

• creating fake pro-Trump electors

• harassing election workers (Ruby Freeman)

• soliciting Justice Department officials

• soliciting Pence

• breaching voting machines

• engaging in a cover up

Most of the Georgia fake electors took immunity deals but the 3 fake electors charged in the indictment didn’t— David Shafer, the former chair of the state Republican Party; State Senator Shawn Still; and Cathy Latham, who was then head of the Coffee County Republican Party. Shafer presided over the December 2020 meeting of the fake electors. Hours before the indictments were handed down it was already bothering Señor Trumpanzee, who was up early yesterday screaming about “tampering” and “rigging” on his pretend Twitter social media platform— and denigrating Willis:

Not merely smearing, but completely dehumanizing his opponents has always been part of the Trump modus operandi and he made time to attack Willis— who he has already told his fragile fan boys is a “racist”— once again on Sunday as well:

But the Georgia case is far more fraught for Trump— and for his 18 cronies— because its a state case, which means he can’t be pardoned by Biden, Meatball Ron or himself (or anyone else who’s in the White House in 2025). It was no surprise that Giuliani and Powell were among those indicted and they ought to start getting along better. Instead, they’ were already trying to paint the other as the fall guy before they were even named co-conspirators. In fact, according to a new report from Rolling Stone, they’re all turning on each other and trying to throw each other under the bus.

On Sunday, Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebaeng wrote that some of Trump’s chief lieutenants and co-conspirators “have recently sought to distance themselves from the efforts of others, implicitly heaping the blame for any potential criminal conduct onto fellow participants in Trump’s attempted coup.

‘It is the please don’t put me in jail, put that other guy in jail strategy that was sure to come up at some point or another,’ says one attorney working in Trump’s legal orbit.

Attorneys for veterans of Trump’s post-election activities like Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro— both of whom have been identified as among the six unnamed “co-conspirators” in the most recent federal indictment of Trump— are now casting blame towards others on the campaign’s legal team or people close to the then-president. Giuliani and his lawyer are now openly trashing and blaming the “crackpot” alleged activities of Sidney Powell, another lawyer who worked on Trump’s post-election efforts. On top of that, Chesebro, the key architect of Trump’s fake-electors ploy, is now trying to downplay his involvement in the effort, spreading the possible blame and criminal exposure elsewhere.

And in recent weeks, Trump and his own lawyers have made abundantly clear that part of their legal defense will lean heavily on “advice of counsel” arguments— in other words, it will involve scapegoating attorneys who were only doing what Trump instructed them to do, or wanted them to do.

Prosecutors appear to be only too happy to seize on these divisions. Sources who’ve been in the room with special counsel staff tell Rolling Stone that in the past several weeks, the special counsel’s office has signaled that they intend to put pressure on the half dozen “co-conspirators” listed in the Trump indictment. Representatives of the special counsel’s office also appear unusually well-briefed on the existing fissures between members of the Trump post-election endeavors, according to those who have spoken with the office.

The feud between Giuliani and Sidney Powell— another attorney and alleged Trump co-conspirators— is among those probed by prosecutors, sources with knowledge of the situation say. Recent witnesses have offered up details on the behind-the-scenes animosity between the two attorneys. They’ve also told investigators their accounts of the former New York mayor’s private antics during the months following Election Day 2020.

Adding to the intra-MAGAland tensions overflowing into public view, Robert Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer, attempted to put as much space as possible between his client and some of Powell’s work to keep Trump in power, emphatically telling CNN: “Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with this,” and, “you can’t attach Rudy Giuliani to Sidney Powell’s crackpot idea.”

Powell in particular has been a major focus of the special counsel’s office, as recently as within the past several days, as Rolling Stone reported last week, with certain Trump allies already providing the Justice Department with what they view as incriminating evidence against Powell.

“If I were the feds, and I wanted to build cases against the [so far unindicted] ‘co-conspirators’ to apply maximum pressure to them, to see what they’d…have to say about the [former] president, this is exactly how I’d do it,” says one person intimately familiar with recent questioning.

It’s “highly probable that several others will be charged,” the person says. “Jack Smith is not slowing down.”

The possibility that one of Trump’s former advisers could turn state’s witness and testify against either him or his aides or close associates is already apparent to the [thrice]-impeached former president.

This summer, Trump has asked some of his political and legal advisers to name who— especially among those investigated or questioned by the special counsel’s office— they believe to be the most “vulnerable” and likely to crack under pressure from prosecutors, according to two people who’ve heard him ask about this.

Last week, longtime Giulian associate and Trump ally Bernie Kerik sat for a nearly five-hour, voluntary interview with special counsel staffers, and his attorney pointed the finger for over-the-top election fraud claims at Trumpist diehard Powell. Kerik is not among the six unindicted alleged co-conspirators, but was asked by federal investigators to offer his accounts relating to multiple alleged Trump co-conspirators and other topics.

“Sidney Powell’s conduct stands in stark contrast to that of Rudy Giuliani and President Trump, who were looking to only make claims that could be backed up by evidence,” Tim Parlatore, Kerik’s lawyer, argues to Rolling Stone. Parlatore previously served as one of Trump’s top attorneys who were handling the Jack Smith probes.

Kerik’s lawyer continues: “Having Sidney Powell in the same courtroom would also significantly undermine [Jack Smith’s] case against the president, because the president and his lawyers could easily point at Sidney and say: Over there is the evidence of making knowingly false claims, not here. And President Trump rejected Ms. Powell’s efforts.”

This is a sentiment shared by Giuliani, and also by various senior members of Trump’s own team who would be thrilled if Powell ended up as one of the people who take the fall for the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and the efforts leading up to it, sources close to Giuliani and the former president say.

As for Chesebro— the attorney accused of being an architect of the Trump team’s bogus-electors scheme — he too has hinted that he may be trying to distance himself from the campaign’s effort to swap in slates of fake electors. That is, now that the fake-elector plans have become a central focus of the Department of Justice’s sprawing criminal investigation.

In a statement sent last week to Rolling Stone, Chesebro’s attorney drew a distinction between the memos his client authored for the campaign and how the campaign acted on them. “Whether the campaign relied upon that advice as Mr. Chesebro intended,” attorney Scott Grubman wrote, “will have to remain a question to be resolved in court.”

Conspicuously, Chesebro’s lawyer added: “We hope that the Fulton D.A. and the Special Counsel fully recognize these issues before deciding who, if anyone, to charge.”

…[A] statement, along with other chatter about Chesebro’s recent moves, has led some of Trump’s lawyers and several members of the ex-president’s inner orbit to wonder if the architect of the fake-electors plot was trying to shovel all blame and potential criminal liability for that very plot on to Trump and his loyalists.

“These concerns have been shared with the [former] president,” one of these sources says.

On Sunday, Chesebro’s attorney declined to comment on this matter.

Meanwhile Trump is still attacking and smearing anyone and everyone— judges, prosecutors, witnesses… In fact, these blast yesterday on his version of Twitter, attacking Georgia former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R), due to testify tomorrow, is nothing short of witness intimidation.

And this was the official Trump line last night. You can tell someone else worked on it with him because he's referred to in the third person, there are no caps and nothing that could land him in legal hot water. It pretty much stuck to the campaign's party line. In fact Trump's only personal touch was to refer to Jack Smith as "Deranged" and to claim that "radical Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis is a rabid partisan who is campaigning and fundraising on a platform of prosecuting President Trump through these bogus indictments"

Followed 3 hours later with something a little more personal and grievance-laden. The Trump we all know and hate... The Witch Hunt continues!