Dont yet know what the fate of Mark Meadows Motion to remove to Federal Court will be. Its very easy to look at this through a vacuum but remember, theres already a moment now to say can i get some of these cases into Federal Court. This is all considering and assuming thats not going to happen because without mark meadows or others it would be, you know, not 19 people. But this is going to be a very interesting hearing to get the room, the temperature of whats happening there. And also what is the preparation like right now for fani willis. Is she really ready to go . And are those Defense Counsels who asked for an earlier trial date, were they calling a bluff or will their bluff now be called . And we will find out fairly soon. Sara, its interesting because we know that as all of this is unfolding right now a federal judge could rule at any moment now whether to allow the former white house Chief Of Staff mark meadows to move his case from a state court in georgia to a federal trial. Right. And the question really with this Mark Meadows Motion is what does it mean for everybody else. If mark meadows is successful in moving his case to Federal Court, and frankly there are a lot of people watching this who say it could be a relatively low bar for meadows to clear to be able to do this, they wouldnt be surprised if he succeeds, what does that mean for the other defendants . Weve seen jeffrey clark, who again is another defendant in this case, a former Justice Department official, already argue in Court Filings i should be in Federal Court and everyone else should come along with me. So the federal judge is going to have to weigh that. And frankly its going to be up to the federal judge in a lot of ways to decide that, to litigate that. They could make what this state court wants to do essentially moot. And we see the judge has just entered. Judge scott mcafee. And hes asked everyone to rise. Now everyone is seated. Lets listen in. All right. Lets go on the record with 23 sc 188947. Who do we have as lead counsel for the state today . Good afternoon, judge. Nathan wade, special prosecutor for the state. Here present at the Counsel Table with me i have executive District Attorney daisha young. Deputy District Attorney will wooton and special prosecutor john floyd. Thank you, mr. Wade. And for mr. Cheseboro whos the lead counsel today . Good morning, your honor. My name is scott grubman. Im representing mr. Cheseboro and with me i have cocounsel. Mr. Grubman have you received express authority to waive your clients presence today . I have, your honor. And who do we have for ms. Powell . Brian rafferty on behalf of miss powell and i have received express permission to waive her appearance. Okay. Thank you, sir. All right. Just a few preliminary thoughts before we kick things off, to be clear the Scheduling Order we entered for mr. Cheseboro earlier last week didnt contain any kind of a ruling on severance. So the plan would be to try to resolve as many of these issues as we can this week and to begin entering Scheduling Orders for the remaining defendants by either the end of this week or early next week. So with that is there Anything Else we should take up before diving into argument, mr. Wade . Just the court had asked the state to be prepared to respond in its notice of the hearing, asked the state to be prepared to respond to a certain questions, good faith estimate in terms of time, how many witnesses and so forth. Were prepared to do that if the court would like. Okay. Well, lets do that during your argument and response when i have to hear from defense on their motions. Okay. So i think just taking it alphabetically there were two motions weve scheduled to be heard today for mr. Cheseboro. So mr. Grubman, floor is yours. And i think the idea would be to try to limit this to 20 to 30 minutes. Well see where the discussion takes us. And go from there. Would your honor, would it be acceptable for your honor if me and my cocounsel, mr. Aurora, theres kind of a natural split, id like to talk about the kind of groups of facts that will go to both of our motions, both the Motion To Sever counts and the Motion To Sever from miss powell. I believe the court indicated youd want to hear arguments on both. And then mr. Aurora will talk more specifically about the statutory factors if thats okay with your honor. And it wont take more we wont take up more time than any one of us would have. Okay. Have at it. Thank you, your honor. Your honor, i want to start off by saying we recognize this is a rico prosecution. We recognize that. And we do recognize that part of rico is, you know, providing prosecutors, at least the state would argue this, and there is some case law to suggest this, providing prosecutors with a little more ability to bring in conduct thats maybe broader nan had they charged a direct crime, for example, in this case. There are i would argue three, four, or five separate alleged conspiracies really contained in one alleged conspiracy in this indictment. Mr. Cheseboro is only concerned in terms of the evidence or allegations with what im going to call the alternate elector alleged conspiracy. The allegations contained in the indictment, and of course im not saying that i believe they are true, but accepting them as true, shows that mr. Cheseboro at most was only involved in that aspect of the conspiracy, specifically the allegations show that mr. Cheseboro sent approximately sent slash received approximately 18 emails, all in his role as an attorney for the Trump Campaign as to opine on the application of the 12th Amendment to the United States constitution and the electoral contact. And then several other emails. Most of those emails were just transmitting the memos that mr. Cheseboro wrote that are alleged in the indictment and one or two other emails to certain State Officials discussing the logistics of how to go through the electoral contact. So thats what ill call the alternate elector alleged conspiracy. Mr. Cheseboro has been indicted as part of that conspiracy. Hes alleged to be part of that conspiracy. Obviously, we will defend those charges. But thats conspiracy a, if you will. Then there are two or three other conspiracies. With all due respect to miss powell, and nothing i say of course in this should indicate whatsoever that im commenting on the evidence against miss powell, and i apologize, i know thats not miss powell, but her representative, mr. Rafferty. Miss powell is alleged to have engaged in a conspiracy, again, just accepting the allegations in the indictment as true, dealing with the Computer Systems down in Coffee County, georgia. And those Computer Systems, as we allege in our indictment, mr. Cheseboro or im sorry, in our motions, mr. Cheseboros not even alleged to have undertaken anything even remotely related to the Coffee County conspiracy, which ill call it. Then theres a third alleged conspiracy. And that third alleged conspiracy ill call i dont necessarily want to use her name because of the circumstances, but the Poll Worker Conspiracy where there are allegations that certain individuals named in the indictment went and tried to apply some Pressure Tactics to a certain poll worker that i believe works here, lives here in Fulton County. That is also a conspiracy that in no way, shape or form involves mr. Cheseboro. And again, thats not my defense take on it. Thats according to the allegations in the indictment. Now, again, as i started off, your honor, i understand that rico does provide flexibility. What i would argue to the court, however, is that of course rico does not overrule all of the rules and statutes and constitutional provisions that ensure that mr. Cheseboro not only has a speedy trial which of course hes already demanded but a fair trial. And mr. Aurora will talk more about the detailed case law. But its pretty clear here, your honor, that if this case were allowed to go to trial with either all 19 defendants, which obviously it seems like thats probably not going to happen, but even with just mr. Cheseboro and miss powell, youre going to have two cases in one. Youre going to have and ill be very interested to hear the governments good faith estimate of evidence and witnesses. But you are going to have days if not weeks, god forbid even, say, months given some experience in some other highprofile cases that are happening in this building under the rico statute, youre going to have weeks if not months of testimony just related to the Coffee County allegations. And because, i mean, if youve just reviewing the publicly available information related to the Coffee County allegations shows that at least the state indicted it, its an alleged wideranging conspiracy involving various people, involving very specific allegations about Computer Trespass and the like. And then youre going to have a full trial. Same trial. But somehow youre going to have to have another full trial within that same trial about the alternate electors. Now, i suspect that the government is going to or the state, im sorry, is going to say, well, its all connected with the same purpose. And therefore it makes sense to keep all these charges together and keep all these defendants together. But your honor, i would ask you to please keep in mind that the purpose that were talking about here, i mean, i guess you can say the purpose is to elect donald trump president. But if that were the purpose and a prosecutor could use a purpose of that magnitude to try to tie together charges and defendants that otherwise have nothing to do with each other, then before we know it, i mean, millions of people, literally millions of people could have been charged in this conspiracy. These are totally separate cases, your honor. And i believe as youll see from my colleague mr. Aurora, who will get up and talk about the case law thank you for allowing us to do that because hes a lot more on top of that than me. And as youll hear in mr. Rafferty i suspect on behalf of ms. Powell, it is going to significantly affect these defendants rights to a fair and impartial trial. Why should mr. Cheseboro have to deal with a jury whos going to sit there for weeks if not months and listen to all of this evidence related to Coffee County and miss powell . Hes never been there. Hes never met miss powell. Hes never emailed, texted or called her. Hes never spoken with her directly or indirectly. And although im not trying to steal the thunder from my colleague mr. Rafferty on behalf of miss powell, same is to be said for miss powell. Why should miss powell have to sit there for weeks and months hearing evidence and testimony about the alternate slate of elector alleged scheme when shes not even alleged to have any involvement in that . And again, for the third and last time ill go back and i do understand that rico exists whether we like it or not, the prosecution chose to bring this case under rico although they could have very well brought this case specifically against individuals who are charged with individual crimes but they chose not to and thats their discretion. But your honor, that should not override mr. Cheseboros right to a fundamentally fair trial. Its in the state constitution. Its in the federal constitution. Its in the georgia code. And im really worried that allowing evidence related to all these other counts and all these other defendants, in particular in this case miss powell, will very seriously jeopardize this. I think as mr. Aurora will make clear it is clearly well within the discretion of the court if not, as we argue, mandatory to grant this severance from miss powell and also to grant the severance we asked for related to the counts that dont affect mr. Cheseboro. So with that, your honor, im sure youd like to hear some case law or supporting authority. So i will let my smarter cocounsel, mr. Aurora, get up and deal with that. Thank you. Good morning, your honor. Which motion do you want me to address first, the severance of the counts or the parties . Yeah, why dont we dive into the severance of defendants . I think thats the one we might have more to talk about. All right. I think, your honor, when you were d. A. We probably ballotled against each other on some of these types of issues trying to get severances together but that was in another lifetime i guess. Ive tried to put most of the case law that weve got thats in the briefs because in the end ill give you some more 2023 cases that just came down a couple weeks ago both federally and in the state system. But in the end i think a Fair Assessment is its your decision. Theres nothing that says if x then ymt or if y then z. Its just youre going to have to weigh the options. Is my voice or is it ringing . Might be a little bit of a feedback. Okay. So with regard to the severance, with regard to ms. Powell, ill go ahead and start the court off with Henderson Versus state. And i highlighted it for the state. And may i approach, your honor . Sure. Came down about 2 1 2 weeks ago, your honor. And if you go toward the second to last page on the back ive highlighted that for the court and for opposing counsel. As you will see, it had notes 40, 41, and 42. Like it said, everythings basically in your discretion. But in this case that just came down a couple weeks ago what we were talking about is sort of highlighted in regards to similarly the facts in our case, right . The first issues going to be is there any confusion about the evidence, are there conflicting defenses, antagonistic defenses, and in the end is there going to be confusion as far as that goes. There will not be any antagonistic defenses because the two people dont overlap at all in the indictment or any evidence that ive seen. The issue is going to be whats the confusion. And one of the remedies is obviously jury charges. And in your case the question becomes how many jury charges can you bring can you provide to the government government. The jury as far as trying to understand all these types of things. So this case that i gave you is a rico case involving gangrelated type charges. And what it basically says is those two people were charged with the same crimes. In the end the court didnt sever those matters. We dont have that here right out of the gate. Theres no antagonistic defenses. Im not going to get into factor 3. Theres really just overflow and spillover as far as that goes. So the question is is the evidence against miss powell going to impact her . And the reason i say that is were charged in the rico and six Predicate Acts. The Predicate Acts only deal with the elector slate as far as who filled out the electors, was that fraudulent or not. With regards to what happened in Coffee County youre going to have a ton of other charges from witness intimidation, computer hacking, fraud that has nothing to do with mr. Cheseboro. The other thing you look at is are these other pieces of evidence going to be similar transactions potentially, which wouldnt be in this case because they have nothing to do with one another, theres nothing similar about it. So when the government argues that its rico and we get to bring in everything and the kitchen sink, i think the cases im going to cite you theres a couple more also from 2023 that talk about yeah, you can bring in everything and its mostly been like gang rico type cases or some type of violence thats out there. It still gives you an out based on what you think. And the reason i bring these up is in all these cases everybodys charged with the same things. Here they can argue its a similar activity, but not to speak for miss powell but essentially from what i understand from the Public Record is she was fired before this conspiracy actually even started out because she said something that was supposedly crazy and the trump people got rid of her and whatever she did was sort of on a lark on her own as far as Coffee County goes. Thats just my understanding from the public. Again, i just want the court to focus in on what type of evidence would come in against miss powell versus what were charged with, which is solely paperwork and legal opinion on three different memos and some emails. So with that ill approach the court on a rico case that dealt with drug dealing. That just came down in Federal Court in march of this year. Ninth circuit. Again, i highlighted everything thats that i believe to be relevant with regards to this case. Mr. Arora, whats the cite on that . 2023 west law 2620418. And if your honor would look at just above headnote 7 its going to be three, four pages in, i realize the bottom of my pages have sort of been cut off. But it would be if you just fold over three pages, and ive highlighted it, there they talk about codefendants being charged in conspiracies and why theres a joinder in these matters. But again, the factually speaking, if you look at it, the charges are the same against each person and the severance isnt necessarily going to change anything as far as that goes. And again, i know im repeating myself, but we dont have similar charges. Its completely different if you look at the indictment as far as that goes. Again, ill emphasize, we are charged solely with the elector portion and the ballots that they filled out that were sent up to washington, d. C. Versus miss powell isnt charged with any of that. Shes charged with i guess Computer Fraud and some other things as it goes to Coffee County. And lastly, before i rest on this part of