Trump ally pleads guilty in Georgia election interference case world

Today, Friday (29), Donald Trump’s ally and former Republican election observer, Scott Hall, pleaded guilty to conspiring to interfere in the elections in the state of Georgia as part of the former US president’s attempts to undo his defeat in 2020.

Hall struck a deal with prosecutors, and so far he is the only one of the 19 defendants charged in the case to plead guilty. He received five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference in the performance of election duties.

The plea agreement calls for Hall to be sentenced to five years in prison and pay a $5,000 fine, the prosecutor said at the online hearing. He will also be asked to testify against other defendants in the case.

Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, initially faced racketeering charges, as well as conspiracy to commit voter fraud and computer crimes. He was accused of participating in illegal tampering with voting equipment in rural Coffee County in the southeastern part of the state in January 2021.

Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell, one of the two defendants who will stand trial next month, is also accused of participating in the violation. Powell pleaded not guilty.

After losing to Joe Biden in the 2020 elections, Trump tried to reverse the result in the states where he lost.

In the USA, elections are indirect: voters actually vote for delegates who will represent each state in an electoral college – and these delegates choose the president. Each state has a specific number of delegates and its own rules for identifying delegates.

In Georgia, the rule is that all of the state’s delegates go to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes — even if by a simple majority. This is what happened in 2020: Biden narrowly beat Trump in the state.

Therefore, this was one of the states where Trump and his allies focused on trying to reverse the results.