While Trump fulminates on social media against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg about the 34-count indictment for false business records, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s case proceeds apace in Georgia.
Yesterday, Willis’s office filed a motion to disqualify Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow, an attorney who represents ten signers of the fake electoral certificate that was submitted to the National Archives in an attempt to steal the state’s 16 electoral votes from President Biden. Originally, Debrow and a second lawyer, Hollie Pierson, jointly represented eleven of the putative electors, with their fees paid by the state GOP.
According to the court, the clients had waived all conflicts, and joint representation because “each of their clients is identically situated in the important sense that each did nothing wrong. Thus, there is no ‘information’ that one elector could provide that would constitute a claim against another elector.”
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Judge Robert McBurney disagreed, and in November he ruled that one of the eleven, state party chair David Shafer, was a more central figure in the fake electors scheme than Pierson and Debrow’s other clients, playing a key role in convening the electors and coordinating with “other key players in the District Attorney’s investigation.” In an email at the time, the court referred to “the impracticability and ethical mess of simultaneously representing eleven clients who, despite their lawyers’ protestations to the contrary, were differently situated.”
The attorneys then split the clients, with Shafer going with Pierson, and the rest remaining with Debrow.
But before that, in July, Judge McBurney “directed the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office election investigation team to have conversations with Ms. Pierson and Ms. Debrow about immunity for their clients.” The DA writes that she complied with the request, offering immunity to all eleven of the electors represented by Pierson and Debrow.
According to the yesterday’s filing, “On August 5, 2022, Ms. Pierson reported to the Court that she and Ms. Debrow had spoken to their clients about potential offers of immunity from prosecution and that none of their clients were interested.” But, the DA goes on, in recent interviews “some of the electors represented by Ms. Debrow told ‘members of the investigation team that no potential offer of immunity was ever brought to them in 2022, which is in direct conflict with Ms. Debrow’s co-counsel Ms. Pierson’s representation to this Court in August, 2022.”
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Which is bad if true, although it should be pointed out that Pierson and Debrow deny it and claim to have recorded all their clients’ interactions with the prosecutor’s office.
But furthermore, the DA now argues that “some of the electors stated that another elector represented by Ms. Debrow committed acts that are violations of Georgia law and that they were not party to these additional acts.”
And so prosecutors are seeking to disqualify Debrow, since she cannot represent clients with adverse interests: “It is unfathomable how Ms. Debrow can offer competent and adequate counsel to her client who has been accused of further crimes; any claim of all 10 of her clients being similarly situated has ‘gone out the window and any additional consent by her clients as to joint representation cannot cure these ethical issues and conflicts of interest.”
Pierson and Debrow defend their conduct to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I have ethically and professionally represented my clients at all times, and I will continue to do so,” Debrow told the paper, calling the DA’s investigation “politically motivated.” For her part, Pierson insists that she has recordings which “unequivocally prove the DA’s allegations false.”
This would appear to suggest she was taping conversations with her own clients, not just witness interviews with prosecutors. Which would be … odd.
Lordy, I hope there are tapes.
Attorney for GOP electors denies mishandling immunity offers [AJC]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.