How Trump’s ‘Me-Too’ Legal Strategy in Georgia Is Helping His Defense

ATLANTA – Donald Trump has a battalion of criminal defense attorneys at his disposal.

But in Georgia, his latest batch of legal filings provide little evidence that the former president has marshaled any of those vast resources toward defeating racketeering charges over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election results in the Peach State.

Instead, Trump's legal team has gotten by with more than a little help from his friends and accused co-conspirators.

By the numbers, at least nine of Trump’s recent defense motions seeking to quash the indictment from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis have been very brief items that essentially adopted the arguments of fellow co-defendants.

Trump is “letting them do the heavy lifting," said Caren Morrison, a Georgia State University law professor who has attended key recent Trump-related court hearings. “Just basically let your co-defendant do the work and spend the money and then just be like: ‘Okay. I'll just add my name to that, please.'"

Waging his Georgia legal battles mainly by proxy has so far paid off for Trump in at least one crucial respect: He's managed to delay his own reckoning before a Fulton County jury.

That's because Trump's co-defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, succeeded in their efforts to be tried separately and will stand trial on Oct. 23, on charges they both played key roles in attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in favor of the Republican president who lost to Joe Biden.

It remains unclear when or whether Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee will subdivide the remaining 17 co-defendants' case further, potentially spelling more delay. But legal experts note that Trump's ability to sit back and watch the Fulton County proceedings play out over the next four or so months could work to the former president's advantage by giving him an early preview of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ evidence and strategy.

“It's always helpful if there’s a trial of your co-defendants first, because you get a preview of the prosecution's case,” Morrison said.

Monitoring Meadows

Trump could benefit even more from maneuvers by co-defendants' who have been trying to force the Georgia charges out of state court and into federal jurisdiction.

While changing venues to U.S. courts may sound like little more than a process win, it would mean Trump's lawyers would be working from a jury pool with a greater percentage of Republicans and also eliminate the Georgia prosecutors' home-field advantage in knowing the people and rules of the Fulton County courts. Shifting Trump's case to federal court also would afford the former president a more direct path to beating the Georgia charges on the grounds he was acting in his official chief executive capacity when the alleged crimes occurred.

So far, Trump has hung back while his ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Justice Department loyalist Jeffrey Clark, and others try to transfer their cases to federal court.

Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow signaled that he “may” seek a transfer for Trump, too, leading some legal experts to speculate that the defense is waiting to see what the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has to say about Meadows’ motion after the former White House official lost his bid before a federal district court judge.

“This is more of an information gathering phase than anything else,” said Morrison. 

One expert interviewed by The Messenger described Trump’s strategy so far as the “me-too” legal defense, adopting the arguments of his less-wealthy accused co-conspirators like Chesebro and Powell.

In most situations, Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney Andrew Fleischman said: “That’s totally normal.”

Take the other high-profile RICO case that's in the same Fulton County jurisdiction and being led by Willis' prosecution team. There, rapper Young Thug’s attorney Brian Steel has filed a number of motions adopted by the musician’s co-defendants.

In Georgia, Sadow and Jennifer Little, another lawyer for Trump, were seated shoulder-to-shoulder with reporters in the public gallery of the federal courtroom in Atlanta for both of the recent Meadows and Clark hearings. Sadow, sporting black caiman leather boots both times, could be seen whispering with Little throughout and jotting down notes. 

“Respectfully, I am not engaging in dialogue with or making comments to the media,” Sadow wrote in an email, when asked to speak about this story.

A ‘Cheap Way of Doing It’

Trump’s defense motions to date have largely co-opted the arguments of fellow co-defendants, including those of Chesebro, Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Ray Smith III, all of whom are attorneys tied to the former president.

Trump has echoed their attacks on Willis’ application of the state’s RICO statute, her theory of criminal liability in the “fraudulent” electors scheme, and the First Amendment defense against her case.

Among this flurry of paperwork, experts find little evidence of coordination among defense teams so far revealing any grand strategy. 

“I see no overall strategy so far,” said Noah Pines, a Georgia defense attorney and former prosecutor. “I've had cases with other lawyers where we've had those conversations and have done things, towards a common goal. I just don't see that so far, in anything I've read.”

Eric Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University, called Trump’s legal team latching onto fellow co-defendants’ motions a “cheap way of doing it.” 

“I don't know if his lawyers are savvy enough to do this the right way,” Segall said. “But I think it's very common, with a lot of different defendants, for defendants to get together and make motions, but that's not really what happened here.” 

But Sadow may be taking a “wait and see” approach, added Morrison, the Georgia State University law professor.

“It may be a clever way of moving when you don’t have an army of associates at your disposal and lots of other people are kicking up a lot of dust, and he’s just waiting to see how things shake out,” she said. 

“It is the smart move to sort of let everybody else make all the fuss and do all the motions," Morrison added, "because every day that goes by, he learns something new."