A prominent conspiracy theorist and the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee are among the latest to make District Attorney Fani Willis’ witness list for the trial of former Trump attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell later this month.
In filings made Tuesday, Fulton County prosecutors announced they intended to call conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to testify in the trial, jury selection for which is set for Oct. 20.
Because Jones and McDaniel didn’t accept service of their subpoenas, Fulton County’s Willis needs the petitions to be signed off by a judge in the witnesses’ respective home states of Texas and Michigan. The petitions filed with Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee are the first step in that process.
In the filing, prosecutors said Jones, who built an empire broadcasting baseless conspiracy theories ranging from accusations that the government controls the weather to mass shootings being staged by actors, would testify in the case against Chesebro.
Chesebro faces seven felony charges in the sprawling racketeering indictment and is accused of being the mastermind behind the plan to empanel illegal slates of Donald Trump electors in Georgia and other states despite evidence that the former president lost the 2020 election.
According to the filing, Chesebro was beside Jones on Jan. 6, 2021, as they marched with thousands in a pro-Trump mob to the U.S. Capitol in “an attempt to disrupt and delay” Congress’s certification of the presidential electoral count.
“Alex Jones will provide evidence to the jury of Kenneth Chesebro’s involvement in the conspiracy, including, without limitation, as it relates to his participation in the march on the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” prosecutors wrote.
The filing also said Jones could testify to communications between himself, Chesebro and others that would show “coordinated efforts” to overturn the 2020 election. Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, told Politico his client would resist testifying and that if he’s forced to will plead the Fifth.
McDaniel also would be a witness against Chesebro and could testify to communications with Trump about plans to assemble “contingent” electors in Georgia and elsewhere.
According to the filing, McDaniel was on a Dec. 14, 2020 conference call with then-President Trump and attorney John Eastman, another defendant in the Fulton County case, in which Eastman urged McDaniel to get RNC support identifying would-be electors. McDaniel allegedly sent a follow-up email through Trump’s assistant regarding the plan.
Prosecutors say McDaniel would testify about communications Chesebro made to Trump and Eastman about the electors plan.
Prosecutors filed a third petition Tuesday seeking testimony from Andrew Hitt, former chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, who also would testify to Chesebro’s involvement in the effort to assemble slates of electors in states where the Trump campaign claimed they lost via fraud. Hitt was one such elector in Wisconsin and attended meetings where Chesebro was present, prosecutors wrote.
Hitt was a witness in the Congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 riot and testified that “Mr. Chesebro was involved pretty extensively in Wisconsin.”
“He was really the one that was sort of guiding this whole process and had come up with the strategy and kind of laid it out,” Hitt said in a deposition before House investigators in February 2022.
The petitions add to the list of known witnesses whose testimony the state is seeking for the upcoming trial. Last week, Willis’s office made similar filings petitioning the court for testimony from Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer in Trump’s inner circle; and former Atlanta libel attorney Lin Wood.
The documents were filed in the middle of a 2 1/2 hour-long procedural hearing before McAfee on Tuesday afternoon, during which Chesebro’s attorneys argued for the cases’ dismissal and, short of that, for certain key evidence to be excluded due to attorney-client privilege.
McAfee appeared skeptical of Chesebro’s argument that the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause demanded that the state charges against him be dismissed. Instead, the Fulton judge suggested that the issue was best debated during the trial, as well as the argument from Chesebro’s lawyers that their client’s conduct should be considered protected speech under the First Amendment.
The judge didn’t suggest how he’d rule on whether certain legal memos Chesebro authored about the alleged electors scheme should be excluded from prosecutors’ presentation to jurors due to attorney-client privilege. He instead asked for Chesebro’s team to first submit additional evidence privately that could speak to Chesebro’s relationship with the Trump campaign.
Chesebro’s attorneys in recent days have also provided glimpses of the witnesses they might call at trial.
On Friday, his legal team disclosed in a public court filing that it plans to summon attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow, who represents eight of the Georgia GOP electors who received immunity in the Fulton Trump case, and Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Mike Murphy, who wrote a memo that concluded that Trump electors who met in the state didn’t violate Wisconsin’s election laws.
Chesebro’s attorneys have also subpoenaed two local journalists who reported on the meeting of Georgia GOP electors at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein and Channel 2 Action News’ Richard Elliot.
AJC Editor in Chief Leroy Chapman said the newspaper is likely to file an objection seeking to dismiss the subpoena of Bluestein.
It’s customary for major American news organizations to seek to avoid reporters having to testify about information they obtain while reporting the news.
Georgia, like most states, has well-established legal grounds for these objections, to prevent reporters from being used as witnesses for either side of a case, except in extraordinary circumstances. The so-called “reporter’s privilege” recognizes that preventing the use of reporters as witnesses is essential to preserving the independence of journalists.
