Law professor flags 'conspicuous absence' of one Trump co-defendant in Arizona indictment
The Arizona indictment released on Wednesday for the fake elector scheme charges several of former President Donald Trump's lawyers and strategists, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, and Boris Epshteyn, as well as Arizona GOP officials like Kelli Ward, and names Trump himself as an unindicted co-conspirator — but there's a conspicuous hole in the indictments, as a major architect of the fake elector scheme, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, is missing.
That's not by accident, NYU Law professor Ryan Goodman wrote for his Just Security site.
"Chesebro has so far escaped prosecution in other states where false electors are under indictment," wrote Goodman. "His protection from prosecution appears to be on the basis that he 'cooperated' with those investigations. However, recent investigative reporting by CNN and others has revealed that Chesebro apparently made false statements to state prosecutors in Michigan and Nevada while feigning cooperation with their respective criminal investigations of false electors (see also this analysis of flaws with his proffer agreement in Georgia)."
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"That all is now fairly well known to close observers of these cases. Why then the Arizona indictment excludes Chesebro is a mystery," he continued. "Prosecutors in Michigan and Nevada have decided not to seek indictments of anyone at the national level and instead focused only on false electors in their states. But in Arizona that’s different, as the prosecutors have now charged several out-of-state individuals who were involved in the nationally coordinated effort to overturn the election results. But not Chesebro."
Goodman concluded that the likeliest explanation was that he did provide help to the Arizona prosecutors specifically.
This comes as former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann speculates that Chesebro might also have some degree of utility as a witness in the federal case brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith, which is currently on hold pending the Supreme Court's review of Trump's claims to presidential immunity.