A new legal filing has exposed a potentially major fracture among a group of so-called “fake electors” in Georgia, who sought to aid Donald Trump in overturning the 2020 election results in a scheme now under criminal investigation.
According to a court document filed on Tuesday, a group of people involved in the scheme recently told state prosecutors that another one of the fake electors committed crimes that they were not involved in.
The finger pointing, included in a document submitted by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, exposes a rift within the group as prosecutors near the end of the investigation and consider bringing charges against the former president and dozens of allies.
The court filing principally sought to disqualify attorney Kimberly Debrow, who represents 10 of the fake electors, from the case because of a twisted new conflict of interest that arose last week, when some of her clients implicated another of her clients in an additional crime.
“Some of the electors stated that another elector represented by Ms Debrow committed acts that are violations of Georgia law and that they were not party to these additional acts,” Willis said in the document, which did not spell out the nature of the alleged crimes.
The fact that 10 of Debrow’s clients were making criminal complaints against another of her clients in the same investigation suggests Debrow can no longer offer adequate counsel to her client accused of further crimes and must be removed from the case altogether, the court filing said.
In seeking Debrow’s disqualification, prosecutors pointed to the Georgia state supreme court’s decision in 2013 to disqualify a lawyer representing a defendant and the defendant’s sister-in-law, after the sister-in-law ended up testifying against the initial client.
The court filing also asked to have Debrow removed from the case after she and her co-counsel at the time, Holly Pierson, appeared to have ignored a July 2022 order from the judge overseeing the investigation to make clear to the fake electors that they could take immunity deals.
A month after the order, according to the document, Pierson claimed that she and Debrow had spoken to their clients about immunity deals and that none of their clients were interested. Pierson later moved to represent only one elector, with Debrow representing the rest.
But when prosecutors interviewed some of the fake electors last week, they were surprised to hear that no potential offer of immunity had ever been discussed with them, the court filing said.
Debrow could not immediately be reached for comment.
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The claims of additional illegal activity by one of the fake electors comes as state prosecutors in the district attorney’s office consider asking a new grand jury to return a potentially sprawling criminal conspiracy against Trump, his top aides and the fake electors themselves.
Willis and her team could finalize their plans as soon as the end of the month and then impanel a grand jury starting in May to hear the case, according to a source familiar with the matter, though it was not clear if the latest development could delay proceedings.
Trump is seen as having two main areas of legal jeopardy in Georgia: the calls he made to officials like the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in an effort to reverse his election defeat in the weeks after the 2020 election, and his role in assembling the fake electors.
But at the heart of the investigation are the steps that Trump and his campaign aides took – knowing it was likely illegal – in assembling 16 pro-Trump electors to surreptitiously gain entry to the Georgia state capitol and submit unauthorized electoral college votes for Trump to Congress.
The special fact-finding grand jury that heard evidence for roughly seven months about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results recently recommended more than a dozen people for indictments. Its foreperson also suggested in media interviews last month that Trump was among them.