Fourth GA Defendant Flipping on Trump - Here's Why

WASHINGTON - Oct. 24, 2023 - PRLog -- Jenna Ellis, who served as a lawyer for Donald Trump's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2020, has agreed to become the fourth co-defendant in Donald Trump's criminal trial in Georgia to flip; her guilty plea making her the third lawyer so far to do so.

Many more defendants in the Georgia criminal case are likely to do so in the future, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who suggested this strong possibility months ago, predicted last week that Kenneth Chesebro would follow the lead of Sidney Powell in flipping, said yesterday that more flippers would follow, and filed the original criminal complaint against the former president which triggered his investigation and subsequent indictment.
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While some of the reasons why several (and perhaps even most) of the remaining co-defendants are likely to flip against Trump are the same as those in routine criminal cases brought in many jurisdictions, some are unique to the unusually higher probably of conviction under Georgia's very broad RICO statute, and to the unavoidable penalties to be imposed upon conviction, the law professor argues.

Any defendant offered the opportunity to plead guilty, in exchange for a substantially less severe sentence than a guilty verdict would likely bring, is under tremendous pressure to cop a plea, even if that requires that he testify against co-defendants.

Unlike career criminals or young prospective gangsters for whom spending time behind bars may be seen as a mere cost of doing business or as a tolerable occupational hazard of committing crimes (if not also for obtaining a street rep as a tough guy), and for whom it might not be that much worse than their current living situation, the remaining Trump defendants appear to be mostly upper-middle-class citizens for whom any time in prison would seem intolerable.

Even if wishful thinking leads them to believe that they have only a small chance of being convicted, defendants facing even the small possibility of years of mandatory prison time with no chance of parole, as well as the certainty of enormous legal fees and the additional possibility of even larger monetary judgments under RICO, are likely to accept plea deals.

Moreover the example provided by these 3 Georgia defendants who have now also gotten away without any prison time or major financial impositions (costs of defending against the charges, as well as any fines and/or forfeitures) are likely to encourage the remaining defendants to try to follow their lead, and it has been reported that plea offers are being made to most of them.

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