A bail bond business owner charged along with former President Trump in a sweeping Georgia election-interference case pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges on Friday, becoming the first of Trump's 18 co-defendants to strike a deal with prosecutors. The deal with Scott Hall, could help Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis bolster her case against the other defendants, who include Trump-aligned lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, the Wall Street Journal reports. Hall agreed to cooperate with the district attorney’s office as part of his plea deal, in which Willis agreed to drop the racketeering charge against him. Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with election duties. Hall, 59, entered the guilty plea during an impromptu court hearing on Friday afternoon before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the racketeering case.
Hall negotiated a recommended sentence with Willis’s office, which will include five years of probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service and writing a letter of apology to the citizens of Georgia. McAfee adopted that recommended sentence, allowing Hall to avoid the threat of prison time. Hall was caught on tape accessing voting equipment in Coffee County, a rural Georgia county about 200 miles from Atlanta. During grand-jury testimony, Hall acknowledged gaining full access to a voting machine, spending hours setting up computers near election records in an attempt to investigate supposed voter fraud. Like Trump and the other defendants, Hall had been charged with violating Georgia’s racketeering statute, modeled after the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Comments