Lawyer says Trump aide told her after 2020 election: ‘The boss isn’t leaving’
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, former President Donald J. Trump planned to refuse to leave the White House “under any circumstance” despite his loss at the polls, a longtime Trump aide told one of the lawyers who is working with prosecutors in Atlanta. part of a plea deal.
The attorney, Jenna Ellis, described the assistant’s statement during an interview with the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney’s office, portions of which were obtained and released Monday. by ABC News.
Such interviews, known as proffer statements, were conducted with Ms. Ellis and three other defendants who took plea deals in the Georgia election interference case against Mr. Trump and more than a dozen of his allies.
ABC has obtained excerpts from the interviews with Ms. Ellis and Sidney Powell, another lawyer charged in the case.
The excerpts from the videotaped interviews provide the first public glimpse of the conversations Ms. Ellis and Ms. Powell have had with prosecutors since their guilty pleas last month. It’s not clear what effect the information they share with prosecutors might have during the trial.
Ms. Ellis was one of 19 people, including Mr. Trump, indicted by a Fulton County grand jury in August on charges of conspiring to overturn the former president’s 2020 election loss. All defendants were charged under the state’s racketeering law; each was also charged with other crimes.
As part of a deal she struck with prosecutors on Oct. 24, Ms. Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer, pleaded to lesser charges, avoiding jail time and promising to cooperate with the investigation. Scott Hall, a bail bondsman in the Atlanta area, and another Trump-affiliated attorney, Kenneth Chesebro, also pleaded guilty.
Their offers, and Ms. Powell’s, were recently turned over to other defendants’ attorneys as part of the discovery process.
Ms. Ellis said in her statement that a longtime Trump aide, Dan Scavino, told her a few weeks after the election that “under no circumstances will the boss leave,” referring to Mr. Trump. Mr. Scavino added that “we’ll just stay in power.”
Ms Ellis said she replied: “Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize.”
In Mr. Scavino’s response, she said, “We don’t care.”
Stanley Woodward Jr., a lawyer for Mr. Scavino, declined to comment on Ms. Ellis’ story.
The bill matches previous reporting from a book about Mr. Trump by Maggie Haberman, a reporter for The New York Times, in which Mr. Trump allegedly told an aide, “I’m just not leaving.”
Ms. Powell, who advanced numerous conspiracy theories about election fraud after the November 2020 election, described conversations at the White House with Mr. Trump, including one in which he considered appointing her special counsel, though the job never materialized.
In response to the ABC report, Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the Georgia case, said Monday that “any alleged private conversation” in the case should be considered “absolutely meaningless.”
“The only notable fact from this nonsensical line of inquiry is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service declined to comment.
Alan Feuer reporting contributed.