this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
214 points (98.2% liked)

News

23320 readers
3073 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

As part of a plea deal, one of former President Donald Trump's attorneys has told prosecutors in Georgia that she was informed in the wake of the 2020 election that Donald Trump was "not going to leave" the White House -- despite the fact that he had already lost the election and most of his subsequent challenges.

The revelation, along with others, came during a confidential interview the attorney, Jenna Ellis, had with Fulton County investigators. ABC News has obtained portions of videos of the proffer sessions of both Ellis and Sidney Powell, two attorneys who aided Trump's efforts to overturn the election. The videos for the first time reveal details of what they have told law enforcement since agreeing to cooperate last month in the district attorney's election interference case.

Ellis, in her proffer session, informed prosecutors that senior Trump White House official Dan Scavino told her "the boss" would refuse to leave the White House despite losing the election, and alluded to two other instances she said were "relevant" to prosecutors -- but appeared to be prevented from disclosing those in the video portions obtained by ABC News due to attorney-client privilege, which hindered portions of her proffer.

top 17 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] dhork@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Is anyone else wondering how these videos are becoming public? It seems weird to have this type of thing leak. I hope that it doesn't force any issues with using this testimony in court.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago

These videos are several weeks old or more, but were recently handed over to defense legal team as part of discovery.

That’s what we do know. Who leaked them after that we don’t know.

[–] tetrachromacy@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From my understanding, these videos contain no actual evidence of 45 committing or ordering wrongdoing. It also looks like these are clips of longer interviews. So my assumption is that someone got a hold of these videos and audio clips and edited them to make it seem like each of these people had nothing worthwhile to say in their statements, then released them.

I believe this because leaking these videos can only hurt the prosecution, particularly if nothing they're saying is inculpatory. Then conservative media outlets can run chyrons "BIG "GET" BY LOONY DA FANI A BUST!" and let the talking heads run wild on it. Then GA's DA office is then faced with a problem: do you say nothing and let people keep believing that there's nothing(which can corrode public opinion in the case which can be devastating) or possibly break confidentiality agreements with the snitches and publish what they actually said?

Who benefits from this info being out in the open? If nothing they said in these recordings fingers 45 on criminal actions, then it's not the prosecution. From where I and all other US citizens sit it sounds like these useless clowns got sweetheart deals to give almost no useful information. Hopefully this is all just some psych op from the extreme right or Russia/China/whoever they're in league with this year, and there's more info that these clowns gave in their deposition that's not included in these recordings.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Someone else made the point that these videos were recently released to the defense as part of discovery. I wonder if they were smart enough to watermark the video. If it can be proven that the videos that were released were edited from files that were directly given to defense lawyers, then I expect those lawyers are in for a world of hurt.

Maybe they are expecting to be pardoned in the next administration, though.

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think watermarking would be helpful. If you're the prosecution and you hand over watermarked evidence, but also want to leak evidence to the public, then you'd almost certainly use the version you watermarked. As we saw with the SCOTUS leaks, it's really hard to detect the source of court leaks.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But I don't think this helps the prosecution at all, in fact it may hinder being able to being this evidence at trial. And doesn't all this discovery material need to be kept secret? The court should be very motivated to find out where this leak came from. If they can't plug it, then this won't be the last leak, and there will be no way to hold a fair trial.

[–] neptune@dmv.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's probably a leak by the people who MADE the video. I think they are telegraphing to Trump how boned he is.

[–] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems more likely to me that these were leaked by the Trump team to try and force an appeal until after the election, by which time he'll have presidential immunity to prosecution.

[–] neptune@dmv.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A proffer wouldn't be made available to Trumps team. I don't think. A proffer would be between a defendant and the prosecution to arrive at some sort of plea deal. Once a deal is arranged, the facts/evidence mentioned in the proffer would be made available to Trump during discovery.

[–] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was my understanding that this was in the evidence that was handed over.

Prosecutors said the footage was turned over to the remaining defendants as part of discovery, urging the court to impose restrictions on how the defendants can disclose the materials.

[–] Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Of course Trump's people "leaked" this. Now he can campaign on how they have nothing and even the videos show it.

I honestly believe he is grabbing all the money he can before heading to Russia for good.

[–] ShortBoweledClown@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wtf are you talking about? A video that's part of plea deal is nothing?

[–] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Basically only portions of the interviews were released. What is in what was released is not great for Trump, but there's nothing terrible for him in there. This suggests they were leaked by the defense who recently obtained the videos. The thought is since it's just a portion of these videos, that the parts that were not leaked have more damning info on Trump. It wouldn't have made sense for the prosecutor to have accepted very nice plea deals if all that's in these shortened videos is what they were giving them. But they're confidential, prosecution can't discuss what's in them until the trial, so we won't know for sure until then.

[–] Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

Oh I'm sure there is some really damning stuff on there but this part looks like nothing. Hence why they released this part only. I say release the whole thing. Maybe we will get some "lumpy pillow" rants out of it.

[–] twistypencil@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hope there is much more that these people have for their proffer than what is here, because cutting a deal on this is weak

[–] Bipta@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

They presumably cut the deal so they wouldn't have to show their case to the other defendants months ahead of time. The proffer offer is a bonus.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

This is what I think the CO should be focusing on rather than allusions Trump made during his speech. They have to prove intent. There are mountains of evidence along the way to develop a case for specific intent in the CO prosecution and it feels like they're taking the weakest route. Evidence like these and others 'along the way' to the January 6th are far stronger than the nuances of what he said in the day of and how it might be interpreted. It's just not at all a way to an air tight strategy. Whereas with the GA evidence, it's almost kick and key around 'specific intent'. Like something in writing or a recording would be better, but his lawyers plea bargain testimony is pretty f'ing alright.