Trump’s Georgia codefendants played significant roles in seeking to overturn Pennsylvania’s 2020 vote

Among the 18 lawyers, aides, and allies who were charged Monday alongside Donald Trump for their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, there are several who played key roles in the former president’s similar push in Pennsylvania.

Here’s a breakdown of some of Trump’s key codefendants, what they’re charged with in Georgia, and the roles they allegedly played in undermining confidence in the election in the Keystone State:

The former president and 2024 GOP primary front-runner is now facing charges in two cases tied to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election — the federal indictment filed earlier this month by Special Counsel Jack Smith and the state case filed in Fulton County, Georgia.

But while Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis described him Monday as the linchpin in a sweeping conspiracy to corruptly turn the 2020 election results in her state in his favor, Trump also singled out Pennsylvania repeatedly as a target for his election lies during the postelection period.

» READ MORE: Trump indictment in Georgia details pressure campaign to change Pennsylvania’s electoral votes

On Twitter, he attacked the state’s public officials including Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, after he said in a TV news interview that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in Philadelphia’s vote. And after GOP leadership in the state’s legislature issued a Dec. 4, 2020, statement saying they lacked the authority to overturn the popular vote and appoint their own slate of pro-Trump electors, the president retweeted a post labeling them cowards.

He summoned the state’s elected officials to the White House, including State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin) and then-Speaker of the Pennsylvania House Bryan Cutler (R., Lancaster) and urged them in separate meetings to convene a special session of the state legislature to declare Pennsylvania’s election results void.

And his campaign sued in late 2020 seeking to disenfranchise nearly 7 million voters in the state based on unspecified allegations of “fraud” — a case that was swiftly rejected by a federal judge who described it as a tortured “Frankenstein’s Monster” of legal claims and the remedy it sought as “unhinged.”

He faces 13 charges in the Georgia case including counts of racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit forgery, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, and filing false documents.

The former New York City mayor who served as Trump’s chief lawyer during the post-2020 election is accused in the indictment of playing a significant role in pressuring Georgia officials to reject their state’s election results and declare the former president the winner.

His similar efforts in Pennsylvania have been well-documented — from his now- infamous Nov. 7, 2020, news conference outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, in which he falsely asserted thousands of ballots had been cast by dead voters in the city, to the Nov. 25, 2020, Senate committee hearing he hosted with State Sen. Doug Mastriano in Gettysburg, an event repeatedly cited in recent months by prosecutors who have filed charges against Trump and his allies.

It was here that he made his only courtroom appearance on behalf of Donald Trump’s campaign — a proceeding in which he hurled wild accusations of a nationwide cabal of Democratic mayors who were plotting to steal the election.

And Cutler, the former speaker of the Pennsylvania House, told Congressional investigators last year that Giuliani called him on a near daily basis in late 2020 pushing a baseless theory that state legislatures could set aside election results based on unsupported suspicions of fraud. Cutler testified that he largely avoided these calls, believing they were inappropriate, and eventually had his attorneys respond, asking Giuliani to stop contacting him.

» READ MORE: As it happened: Donald Trump indicted in Georgia; what to know about the two Philly natives charged

Giuliani’s efforts to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania have formed the basis of pushes from the bar associations in New York and Washington to revoke his license to practice law.

He faces 13 counts in the Georgia case.

Trump’s chief of staff was involved in multiple aspects of Trump’s plan to stay in power — including connecting the former president to state officials.

“Can you send me the numbers for the speaker and leader of the PA Legislature. POTUS wants to chat with them,” Meadows texted U.S. Rep. Scott Perry (R., Pa.) on Nov. 21, 2020, according to the Georgia indictment.

(Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the House Jan. 6 committee that she saw Meadows burn papers in his office a dozen times during the final weeks of the administration — including twice after he’d met with Perry. Hutchinson said she didn’t know what the documents were.)

He was also among those who met with Mastriano and other Pennsylvania lawmakers at the White House on Nov. 25, 2020, after a state legislative committee hearing in Gettysburg to urge them to hold a special session of the state legislature to declare Pennsylvania’s election results void, the indictment says.

He faces two counts in the Georgia case including racketeering conspiracy and soliciting a public officer to violate their oath.

An appellate attorney who advised the Trump campaign, Chesebro helped design the plan to have fake pro-Trump electors appointed in six key battleground states to disrupt the official certification of the Electoral College vote. Yet even as the plan was being devised, he expressed doubts to others within the campaign about its legality.

In a Dec. 12, 2020 memo, Chesebro laid out a process of how the plan could work, ultimately relying on then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay the vote count or refuse to confirm the election.

“I’m not necessarily advising this course of action,” Chesebro wrote in the memo, describing it as a “bold, controversial strategy.”

» READ MORE: Trump is coming to Philadelphia for a fundraiser next month

Chesebro also noted that in some states valid electors are required to meet to cast votes in specific venues or in the presence of the governor or secretary of state. The rules, Chesebro wrote in a separate memo, could make assembling alternate slates “very problematic” in Nevada and “somewhat dicey” in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

He faces seven counts in the Georgia case.

A Tacony native, graduate of Father Judge High School, and former Justice Department official, Clark has previously attracted scrutiny from Congress and law enforcement for his willingness to use the DOJ’s imprimatur to advance Trump’s false claims of election fraud even when others wouldn’t.

» READ MORE: Who is Jeffrey Clark, the Philly native and ex-Justice Department official charged in Trump’s Georgia indictment?

Specifically, he’s accused in the Georgia indictment of sending a false letter on DOJ letterhead to officials in that state saying the department had identified “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states.” It urged Georgia’s legislature to convene a special session to consider selecting an alternate slate of pro-Trump electors.

But while other Justice Department officials would later describe the letter as ”wildly inappropriate and irresponsible,” Trump appreciated Clark’s willingness to adopt a tough stance and briefly considered in early 2021 elevating him to attorney general.

Trump abandoned that plan, however, after multiple top DOJ officials threatened to resign in protest.

He faces two counts in the Georgia case.

A Colorado attorney and another member of Trump’s legal team, Ellis worked closely with Giuliani on his efforts to undermine confidence in the election results in Pennsylvania and other battleground states.

She accompanied Giuliani during presentations to state lawmakers in Arizona and Pennsylvania in which they presented false claims that the vote in both states had been riddled with fraud.

According to the Georgia indictment, she drafted memos for the Trump campaign arguing with little legal basis that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to reject the lawful presidential electors from states that Joe Biden had won.

After her involvement in the 2020 election fallout, Ellis signed on as a chief legal adviser to Mastriano’s unsuccessful campaign last year for Pennsylvania governor.

She, along with six other lawyers, is currently facing disciplinary proceedings before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for her alleged misuse of the legal system during the 2020 election and its aftermath.

She faces two counts in the Georgia case.

Powell, an attorney, rose in Trump’s orbit after several of his campaign lawyers refused to pursue his postelection conspiracy theories. She encouraged Trump to declare martial law in order to seize voting machines.

In Georgia, prosecutors allege Powell was involved in a scheme to breach election equipment in Coffee County. In December 2020 she “entered a written engagement agreement” with a forensic data firm that later stole voter data from the county, the indictment says.

Powell hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing in Pennsylvania specifically. But in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a nonprofit organization she ran helped arrange for a private company to examine voting machines in rural Fulton County, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s secretary of state in 2021 said the inspection violated state law and decertified the machines.

She faces seven counts in the Georgia case.

Eastman, a law professor from Colorado, was a primary advocate for the legal argument that Vice President Mike Pence could set aside congressional certification of Biden’s victory. He also pushed swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona to name fake Trump elector slates.

A month after the election, Eastman directly appealed to Pennsylvania state lawmaker Russ Diamond, of Lebanon County. He pitched him a plan to unilaterally declare a new outcome to Pennsylvania’s popular vote, disregarding tens of thousands of legitimately cast absentee ballots.

Citing baseless concerns over the state’s mail voting procedures, Eastman suggested that GOP legislators could subtract votes from Biden based on absentee ballot rejection rates from prior election.

“Having done that math, you’d be left with a significant Trump lead that would bolster the argument for the Legislature adopting a slate of Trump electors — perfectly within your authority to do anyway, but now bolstered by the untainted popular vote,” Eastman wrote in a Dec. 4, 2020, email to Diamond. “That would help provide some cover.”

In addition to the criminal indictment, Eastman is facing disbarment in California over his efforts to undo the 2020 election result.

Eastman faces nine counts in the Georgia case.

A Kensington native, former GOP ward leader in Philadelphia, and the Trump 2020 campaign’s director of Election Day operations, Roman has been credited with carrying out most of the legwork in organizing slates of fake Trump electors in battleground states.

In Georgia, that role included identifying GOP officials in the state willing to sign on to the fake electors plan and keeping close tabs on their meeting Dec. 14 to falsely cast what they represented to be the state’s electoral votes. Roman played a similar role in organizing the slate from Pennsylvania, his home state.

» READ MORE: Who is Mike Roman, the Philly campaign operative charged in Georgia with helping Trump efforts to overturn the 2020 election?

According to congressional investigations, he helped craft language requested by the Trump electors in Pennsylvania that is likely to end up protecting them from possible prosecution. Unlike the certifications submitted by the fake electors in other states, that clause in the Pennsylvania documents stated that they were only putting themselves forward as the state’s lawful electors if courts overturned the election results.

During an interview with the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Roman asserted his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination when asked by investigators whether Giuliani had appointed him “the lead for executing the voting” by fake electors.

The interview transcript also references a briefing of Pennsylvania lawmakers in November 2020 about purported election fraud. On Nov. 8, 2020, Roman shared with an associate a screenshot of a message he’d obtained that said: “Maybe the Trump campaign should get some actual evidence of fraud and file in court. They’ve been horrible in their court filings. We just got a report from their legal team. They told us in caucus they have zero evidence.”

Roman declined to tell investigators who sent him the message or discuss the briefing of Pennsylvania lawmakers, apparently delivered by Kentucky’s secretary of state.

He faces seven counts in the Georgia case.