Kenneth Chesebro has filed a motion in a Georgia court to invalidate his guilty plea from last year in the state’s RICO case related to the 2020 election.
Filed Wednesday morning, Chesebro’s motion is unrelated to President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 victory or Special Counsel Jack Smith’s withdrawal of the federal January 6 case. Instead, Chesebro is challenging his state-level guilty plea because a judge invalidated the relevant charge earlier this year.
In September, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that three counts in District Attorney Fani Willis’s RICO indictment were unconstitutional. McAfee determined that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prevented charges related to making false statements to a federal body from being prosecuted at the state level.
Chesebro had already pleaded guilty to one of the dismissed counts—conspiracy to file false documents—before McAfee’s ruling. In his recent filing, Chesebro contends that the charge should be nullified as unconstitutional, despite his earlier plea.
