Two of the attorneys who worked to try and help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election and pleaded guilty in the Georgia case have written an apology as part of their plea deal – with the feeble letters only one sentence long.
Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro’s letters were obtained on Thursday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an open records request.
Neither letter acknowledges the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia’s 2020 election nor denounces the baseless conspiracy theories they pushed to claim Trump was cheated out of victory through fraud.
‘I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,’ Powell wrote in a letter dated October 19 – the same day she pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.
Chesebro wrote: ‘I apologize to the citizens of the state of Georgia and of Fulton County for my involvement in Count 15 of the indictment.’
He wrote the letter on October 20, when he appeared in court to plead guilty to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.
Sidney Powell, pictured left in December 2020, was one of the most passionate proponents of Donald Trump’s evidence-less claim of election fraud. Kenneth Chesebro (right) was one of the masterminds of the strategy
Sidney Powell’s one-sentence letter, written as part of her plea deal
Powell’s mugshot from her August 23 booking in Fulton County, Georgia
Chesebro’s letter was as succinct as Powell’s, and also written by hand on the day he entered his guilty plea
Chesebro’s mugshot, taken on August 23 when he handed himself in in Fulton County, Georgia
A spokesperson for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the election interference case, declined on Thursday to comment on the contents of the letters.
Powell and Chesebro were among four defendants to plead guilty in the case after reaching agreements with prosecutors.
They were indicted alongside Trump and others in August and charged with participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally keep the Republican in power.
The remaining 15 defendants – including Trump, lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – have all pleaded not guilty.
Each of the four who reached a deal with prosecutors received a sentence that included probation but no jail time. They were also allowed to plead guilty under Georgia’s first offender law, meaning that if they complete their probation without violating the terms or committing another crime, their records will be wiped clean.
The letters written by the other two defendants to plead guilty – Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis and bail bondsman Scott Hall – were longer and more specific.
Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pleaded guilty to helping Trump’s allies with their scheme
Scott Hall’s letter was significantly more comprehensive than Chesebro’s or Powell’s
Ellis read her letter in open court on October 24, tearfully telling the judge that she looked back on her involvement in challenging the election results with ‘deep remorse.’
‘What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,’ she said.
‘In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence.’
Hall, who pleaded guilty September 29, wrote in his five-paragraph letter to the citizens of Georgia: ‘I owe you an apology.’
‘I wish I had never involved myself in the post-election activities that brought me before the court,’ he wrote, explaining that he got involved after observing what he thought were some irregularities.
Powell was initially charged with felony racketeering and six other felony counts.
A tearful Jenna Ellis addresses the court in Fulton County, Georgia on October 24, reading out her apology letter
Jenna Ellis cries in the courtroom in Georgia after reading her letter out loud
Ellis embraces her attorney Franklin Hogue after pleading guilty
Jenna Ellis with Trump in 2020
Jenna Ellis addresses a press conference with other members of President Donald Trump’s legal team, including former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, left, Sidney Powell, middle, at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington DC on November 19, 2020
Prosecutors allege that she conspired with Hall and others to access election equipment without authorization and hired computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to send a team to Coffee County, in south Georgia, to copy software and data from voting machines and computers there.
The indictment says a person who is not named sent an email to a top SullivanStrickler executive and instructed him to send all data copied from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Coffee County to an unidentified lawyer associated with Powell and the Trump campaign.
Chesebro was initially charged with felony racketeering and six other felony counts.
Prosecutors allege that he unlawfully conspired with Trump and lawyers associated with his campaign to have the group of Georgia Republicans sign the false elector certificate and to submit it to various federal authorities. He also communicated with Trump campaign lawyers and Republican leaders in other swing states won by Biden to get those states to submit false slates of electors as well, prosecutors alleged.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.
She had been charged with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law and soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer, both felonies.
The indictment in the sweeping case details a number of accusations against Ellis, including that she helped author plans on how to disrupt and delay congressional certification of the 2020 election’s results on January 6, 2021, the day a mob of Trump supporters eventually overran the U.S. Capitol.
And she’s accused of urging state legislators to back false, pro-Trump electors in multiple states.
Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts for his role in accessing Coffee County elections equipment.