Pro-Trump Lawyer Isn’t Immune from Georgia RICO Prosecution and Can’t Suppress His Emails, Judge Rules

Attorneys for Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of a false-electors scheme, received two major setbacks on Friday in his efforts to scuttle Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' election-racketeering prosecution.

Just as Chesebro appeared in a Georgia courtroom, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued two written orders rejecting his bid for immunity from prosecution and his request to suppress emails that authorities obtained via a search warrant.

Earlier this month, Chesebro's attorneys sought to dismiss the charges against him, arguing that he was shielded by the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which holds that federal laws take precedent over state law when there is a conflict between the two.

Willis recently called that argument "flawed."

"The Defendant's argument for immunity is not immediately clear, nor the legal basis of his motion readily apparent, beyond that he asks the Court to dismiss the indictment against him and that he, in passing, refers to the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution," Willis wrote on Sept. 27.

Judge McAfee found that the force of his argument is for a jury to decide.

"The Defendant’s affirmative defense that he simply performed his legal duty to a client may be suitable for a jury charge," his ruling states. "But it is irrelevant in the pretrial context of immunity, and this Court declines the invitation to supplant the jury’s role as the factfinder."

Chesebro's attorneys also unsuccessfully argued that the search warrant used to obtain his emails was "defective, and the search and seizure predicated thereon is illegal."

Prosecutors "backdoored" their way into obtaining emails that are protected by attorney-client privilege, Chesebro's lawyers, Scott Grubman and Manubir Arora claimed.

The judge reviewed that warrant and saw none of the alleged defects.

"After reviewing the motion and assuming the relevant proffered facts to be true, the Court nevertheless finds that the motion fails to raise sufficient questions of law or fact that would require an evidentiary hearing and DENIES the motion," McAfee wrote.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Oct. 20 in the trial for Chesebro and co-defendant Sidney Powell. Their case is moving ahead first after a request to use Georgia's speedy trial law and has been split off from the same 41-count indictment filed against former President Donald Trump and 16 other co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark.