Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 5
Live right now, Kenneth Chesebro, alleged architect of the 'fake electors' plot, has struck a plea deal with prosecutors in Fulton County.
No. of Recommendations: 5
The original Georgia charges against Chesebro were:
Violation of Georgia's RICO Act
Conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer
2 counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree
2 counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings
Conspiracy to commit filing false documents
It sounds like Chesebro didn't win a deal that eliminated the possibilty of prison time entirely. He might serve 1-5 on the sole criminal charge of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings. I suppose the "carrot" offered to him was to eliminate the state RICO charge which might have incurred a 5-20 year prison term.
I still think every one of these parties should be getting jail time and significant financial penalties but in the larger picture, Fani Willis seems to be optimizing the facts and limitations faced in this case nearly perfectly.
One other note with Chesebro... The current telling of this entire sad saga usually reflects that Chesebro devised and memorialized the "alternate electors" scheme for rejecting elector slates from targeted states on the grounds of ginned up "controversy" about local election integrity. I think the reality is that this entire scheme was concocted by Roger Stone first, shared with the larger conspiracy circle, then re-drafted to appear to be coming from Chesebro. Up until that point, he had some bona fides as a "reasonable" person and even had some "liberal street cred" for his work in 2000 for the Gore campaign in the Florida hanging chad debacle. No one wanted to float this scheme to state Republican Party officials and courts if it had Roger Stone's signature on it so Chesebro's role was to essentially launder the true provenance of this scheme by "authoring" the legal opinion under his name. I think the timing of this was docmented by the two French film makers who were following Stone around for a couple of months even prior to the November 2020 election who continued following him between November 2020 and January 6, 2021.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 2
WTH: No one wanted to float this scheme to state Republican Party officials and courts if it had Roger Stone's signature on it so Chesebro's role was to essentially launder the true provenance of this scheme by "authoring" the legal opinion under his name. I think the timing of this was documented by the two French film makers who were following Stone around for a couple of months even prior to the November 2020 election who continued following him between November 2020 and January 6, 2021.
I think this read on Stone is likely to be the correct one. Stone's pardon was for the Russia investigation and not this, but I don't remember any of the unnamed conspirators, etc., being identified as Stone. Am I missing something?
No. of Recommendations: 10
Stone wasn't explictly or implicitly named in Smith's indictment but that is likely due to that part of the chain of events not being clearly understood at the time or simply because Smith wanted to limit the splash zone to keep efforts focused on Trump. The documentary created by the two French film makers does seem to fill in a lot of details of Trump's "shadow coup cabinet" with actual video footage of Stone verbally dictating nearly 95% of the final Chesebro memo on a conference / webex call one or two days PRIOR to the date on Chesebro's legal "brief."
Given Smith's focus on Trump, the exact provinance of that brief doesn't change the interpretation of Trump's guilt by acting on that brief so Smith may not care up front. However, I can think of few deserving an eventual indictment, prosecution, conviction and actual prison time for their acts than Roger Stone. He has proudly served in his self-appointed role as dirty trickster since the early 1970s. Karma -- and the American public -- deserve a payback.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 0
WTH: However, I can think of few deserving an eventual indictment, prosecution, conviction and actual prison time for their acts than Roger Stone
I may not be familiar with them all. There are a lot of players here.
