This Week: Former Trump Lawyers Plead Guilty as Trump Fights Gag Orders in Court and MAGA Supporters Push Voting Restrictions and Gerrymandering in the States
This week, in the Fulton County case against former President Donald Trump for allegedly leading a vast multistate criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 presidential election in seven states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, three former Trump lawyers—Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis—pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against him.
In the federal case against the former president for allegedly leading a coup attempt after losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump appealed the “narrow gag order” that prohibits him from making threatening statements against prosecutors, witnesses, court staff, and their families.
In the New York case in which the judge ruled that Trump and his businesses committed fraud by overvaluing their assets, the judge fined Trump $5,000 for violating the limited gag order that was imposed after Trump maligned court staff on social media.
In the Michigan case against 16 “so-called fake electors” for signing documents falsely claiming that Trump won the state in the 2020 election, charges were dropped against one of the defendants after he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
In the states, voting restrictions continue to be debated in the courts and legislatures. In Arizona, an appellate court ruled that counties do not have the authority to hand count ballots. Also in Arizona, a group of MAGA supporters filed a lawsuit asking a court to rule that drop boxes are illegal.
In Georgia, a bill to allow voters “to fill out paper ballots by hand instead of using touchscreens” was introduced by the chair of the Senate committee that oversees voting issues. Voting machines in the state have “come under fire” from MAGA supporters in Georgia.
In Pennsylvania, an appellate court ruled that a pro-MAGA organization that operates a searchable online database of “registered voters, addresses, party affiliations and which elections they voted in” is prohibited under state law from getting “copies of Pennsylvanians’ voting records without promising the information won’t be published online.”
In North Carolina, the governor filed a lawsuit challenging a new law supported by MAGA legislators to let the state legislature step in to overturn election results. Gerrymandering cases continue to work their way through the courts in many states. A racial gerrymandering case in Georgia is heading to trial, while in North Carolina, MAGA supporters introduced new gerrymandered state legislative and congressional maps in the General Assembly.
