During a Friday discussion on MSNBC, Dave Aronberg, a state attorney in southern Florida, said he expects a portion of the defendants in the new Trump criminal case in Georgia to flip, meaning strike a deal with local prosecutors.
Among the relevant factors is the potentially high cost of legal services for defense against some of these charges. The case involves allegations of involvement in a criminal conspiracy against 19 people, ranging from former President Donald Trump to essentially grassroots-level supporters of his who in some fashion supported his efforts to stay in power. Several, for instance, were involved in an allegedly criminal scheme to copy data from local elections systems in Coffee County, a Georgia jurisdiction. The data was meant to support attempts in Trump’s circles to find the non-existent fraud that Donald claims swung the 2020 presidential election.
“I think it was part of Fani Willis’s strategy in indicting 19 people, that some of them would flip, and she wouldn’t have to go to trial against all 19,” Aronberg said on “Morning Joe.” “Look, RICO cases are very expensive to defend, and they’re trying to crowdsource the money, raising the money online, and some of them are doing so. But they’re all charged with RICO, all 19. No matter how big or small their involvement in this scheme. So, it is a daunting task for them, very intimidating. And I do expect a bunch of them to flip.”
Already, there has been reporting about one of the Georgia defendants, Mark Meadows, providing potentially critical information in a separate criminal case. Speaking with investigators about Trump’s allegedly criminal harboring of classified documents, Meadows — who was chief of staff in the Trump White House as Donald was leaving office — said he wasn’t aware of several declassifying actions that would’ve potentially covered the documents found with the former president. This attestation from someone who would have been in the know undercuts the assertions from Trump that the disputed documents were declassified.
