Sadow, Steve

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    Georgia Appeals Court to Weigh Whether Trump Prosecutor Should Be Disqualified

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    The decision to hear the appeal reopens the possibility that Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, could be disqualified from prosecuting Donald Trump and 14 allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The Georgia Court of Appeals will hear an appeal of a ruling that allowed Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, to continue leading the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump on charges related to election interference, the court announced on Wednesday.The decision to hear the appeal, handed down by a three-judge panel, is likely to further delay the Georgia criminal case against Mr. Trump and 14 of his allies, making it less likely that the case will go to trial before the November election.The terse three-sentence announcement reopens the possibility that Ms. Willis could be disqualified from the biggest case of her career, and one of the most significant state criminal cases in the nation’s history.At issue is a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, a lawyer she hired to handle the prosecution of Mr. Trump. Defense lawyers argued that the relationship amounted to an untenable conflict of interest, and that Ms. Willis and her entire office should be removed from the case.But on March 15, Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court ruled that Ms. Willis could keep the case if Mr. Wade stepped away from it. Mr. Wade resigned a few hours after judge issued his ruling.Steven H. Sadow, the lead counsel for Mr. Trump in Georgia, said in a statement Wednesday that his client “looks forward to presenting interlocutory arguments to the Georgia Court of Appeals as to why the case should be dismissed and Fulton County D.A. Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution.”A spokesman for Ms. Willis’s office declined to comment on the appeals court’s action. More

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      Trump’s Georgia Lawyer, Steven Sadow, May Soon Drop His Quiet Strategy

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      Steven Sadow’s minimalist approach in the racketeering case against his client has created some dramatic tension, but his silence may be coming to an end.Steven H. Sadow, the lead lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump in his Georgia criminal case, has been praised by the Atlanta rapper T.I. — one of Mr. Sadow’s former clients — as “probably the best criminal defense attorney of his time,” a man with “a slight hint of genius.”If so, much of that genius has remained bottled up since Mr. Trump’s indictment in Georgia over the summer. Mr. Sadow, a heavyweight in the Atlanta legal world who specializes in representing what he calls “high profile individuals,” has so far kept a low profile in the state election interference case, largely piggybacking on briefings from other lawyers representing Mr. Trump’s co-defendants.Mr. Sadow has only rarely spoken publicly about the case. And at a number of related court hearings, he has shown up alone, in his trademark cowboy boots, observing the proceedings from the courtroom gallery.His minimalist approach stands in marked contrast to those of other, more voluble lawyers that Mr. Trump has retained around the country to deal with his legal problems. It has also lent a certain dramatic tension to the Georgia case. He is like a featured soloist in a band who has yet to really play.The quiet period may soon be coming to an end. This week, Mr. Sadow filed a motion arguing that before any trial, the Georgia courts should weigh whether the 13 felony charges against Mr. Trump should be thrown out because his claims about voting fraud after he lost the 2020 election were protected by the First Amendment.And on Friday, Mr. Sadow is expected to make his first significant court appearance in the case, to argue that Mr. Trump should be granted access to evidence gathered by federal prosecutors in his separate election interference case in Washington.The hearing could provide early hints of Mr. Sadow’s long-game strategy, and how he might incorporate lessons learned over decades of defending a colorful roster of clients including rappers and the occasional tabloid demi-celebrity.“This is an enormously creative guy who will design a defense based on all the tools at his disposal,” said Arthur W. Leach, a former assistant U.S. attorney who has faced off against Mr. Sadow.Like Mr. Trump’s lawyers in his other pending criminal cases, Mr. Sadow is trying not only to win exoneration for his client, but also to delay. Prosecutors have proposed an August start date for the Georgia trial, but Mr. Trump would probably prefer that it be pushed beyond next fall’s presidential election, in which he is a candidate.The indictment accuses the former president and 14 allies of conspiring to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss in Georgia; four other defendants have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.Mr. Sadow, 69, declined an interview request. He has previously let it be known that he is not a Trump supporter. He took over as Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer on the day of the former president’s voluntary surrender in August, replacing Drew Findling, known as the Billion Dollar Lawyer for his work defending prominent hip-hop artists.Mr. Sadow’s friends say that he most likely took the case for the challenge, as well as for the money. Mr. Findling’s firm was paid at least $816,000 for about a year’s worth of work, according to public records.Legal experts say that Mr. Sadow’s understated approach is a calculated strategy.Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court at a hearing for Harrison Floyd, part of the Georgia election indictments. Pool photo by Dennis ByronHe has probably been watching the moves of other defendants’ lawyers to see which approaches fare best with Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, who is relatively new to the bench. Mr. Sadow has occasionally joked to reporters that there was no reason he should write his own briefs when other lawyers who happen to be great writers have already done good work.Mr. Sadow may be trying not to put anything on paper that could inadvertently help Jack Smith, the prosecutor in the separate federal election interference case against Mr. Trump, which is scheduled to go to trial in Washington in March.“I don’t think anybody on Trump’s legal team in Georgia wants to do anything that will remotely rock the boat in D.C.,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University.In courtrooms in Atlanta and beyond, Mr. Sadow has shown an aptitude for aggressive cross-examination and thinking on his feet.Christian Fletcher, a client of Mr. Sadow’s who was acquitted in a major health care fraud case in March, said Mr. Sadow’s real strength was his feel for people, and for how jurors think. “It’s like he downloads who you are as a person,” he said, “and what moves you.”In an online interview with his client T.I., the rapper, Mr. Sadow said he did his own legal research because “I don’t think anybody else can do it better than me.” He also said he had been called to the profession to curb the excesses of government power.“People need to be looked after and protected,” he told the performer. “They’ve got to be protected against the government” — because, he said, the government does not care about most people.In addition to T.I., who was pleased with the plea deal and the one-year prison sentence that Mr. Sadow helped him secure when he faced a federal gun charge, he has represented the rappers Gunna and Rick Ross, who occasionally name-drops Mr. Sadow in his lyric.The rapper T.I. has praised Mr. Sadow, who arranged a plea deal for him on a federal gun charge.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“Indictment on the way, got Sadow on the case,” he rapped on his 2019 song “Turnpike Ike.”In 2000, Mr. Sadow obtained an acquittal for Joseph Sweeting, who had been charged in the stabbing deaths of two men after a Super Bowl party in Atlanta. The case earned national attention because Ray Lewis, the Baltimore Ravens football star, had also been charged; Mr. Lewis reached a plea agreement with prosecutors.Mr. Sadow also represented Steven E. Kaplan, the owner of a notorious Atlanta strip club called the Gold Club, which was targeted by federal prosectors who claimed it had mob connections and allowed prostitution. Mr. Sadow called it a “very good deal” when Mr. Kaplan, who had been facing decades in prison, pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in 2001, receiving a 16-month sentence and a $5 million fine.What those successes will bring to bear on Mr. Trump’s case is hard to say. Mr. Sadow faces the uphill task of winning over a jury in Fulton County, where President Biden won 73 percent of the vote in 2020. A number of legal experts following the case expect Mr. Sadow to file a motion soon arguing that Mr. Trump should be immune from the Georgia charges because he was the president. Mr. Trump’s lawyers in the Washington case have filed a similar motion that many experts say is unlikely to succeed.Mr. Sadow grew up in Ohio and moved to Atlanta in the 1970s to attend Emory Law School. Even back then, said Martin Salzman, a lawyer and a former classmate, he excelled at thinking up alternate theories for a case.“I said, ‘You just think like a criminal — that’s why you like criminal law,’” Mr. Salzman recalled, chuckling. “He really comes up with theories that most other people just don’t, in order to bring up a reasonable doubt.” More

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      Trump Will Not Seek to Move Georgia Election Case to Federal Court

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      His decision comes after Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, tried unsuccessfully to move his own case from state to federal court.Former President Donald J. Trump will not seek to move the criminal racketeering case against him in Atlanta to federal court, according to a legal filing from his lawyer on Thursday.Mr. Trump was indicted by a grand jury in August, along with 18 of his advisers and allies, after a two-and-a-half year investigation into election interference by the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis. Keeping the case in state court means that any trial for Mr. Trump would be televised, unlike in federal court.“This decision is based on his well-founded confidence that this honorable court intends to fully and completely protect his constitutional right to a fair trial,” Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, wrote in the filing, referring to Fulton County Superior Court, “and guarantee him due process of law throughout the prosecution of his case.”The move comes a few weeks after a federal judge rejected an effort by Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, to move his own case to federal court. That decision has been appealed, but it dimmed the chances for successful removal efforts by other defendants, including Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, and three Georgia Republicans who submitted bogus Electoral College votes for the former president in December 2020.Removal is a longstanding practice meant to protect federal officials from state-level prosecution that could impede them from conducting federal business. It is rooted in the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which makes federal law “supreme” over contrary state laws.But Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia decided this month that the actions ascribed to Mr. Meadows in the indictment were not within the scope of his federal duties as White House chief of staff. The evidence, he ruled, “establishes that the actions at the heart of the state’s charges against Meadows were taken on behalf of the Trump campaign with an ultimate goal of affecting state election activities and procedures.”Removal to federal court would have provided some advantages for Mr. Trump, including a jury pool somewhat more favorable to him. But he would have faced the same state felony charges.In the Georgia case, all 19 defendants are facing a racketeering charge for their role in what prosecutors have described as a “criminal organization” that sought to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state. Each defendant also faces at least one other charge; Mr. Trump and his former personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, face the most — 13 each.If Mr. Trump ends up going to trial in Fulton County Superior Court, as now seems increasingly likely, the presiding judge will be Scott McAfee, who was recently appointed to the bench.While attending law school at the University of Georgia, Mr. McAfee was a vice president of the school’s chapter of the conservative Federalist Society. He later worked for the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, where his supervisor was Ms. Willis.Thus far, Judge McAfee has been moving the court proceedings along briskly, but he has not had the opportunity to make many substantive rulings.When Mr. Trump will actually face trial remains uncertain. Two of the lawyers who worked to keep him in power, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, are set to go to trial on Oct. 23. The two defendants had requested an early trial date, which is their right under Georgia law, though both have been filing a flurry of motions over the last few weeks to dismiss the case, or parts of it.Another lawyer who faces charges, John Eastman, said in a filing on Thursday that he might still invoke his right to a speedy trial. Those not seeking the option may not face trial until the second half of next year, or even later. More

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      Trump Moves to Quash Most Charges Against Him in Georgia

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      The motion essentially piggybacked off another filed by one of the former president’s co-defendants, which gave a detailed critique of the sprawling indictment.Former President Donald J. Trump asked a judge on Monday to throw out most of the 13 charges against him in the wide-ranging election interference indictment handed up by a grand jury last month in Georgia.The one-page motion from Mr. Trump’s Georgia lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, refers to a more expansive motion also filed on Monday by one of Mr. Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia case, the lawyer Ray Smith III. That motion gives a detailed critique of the 98-page indictment, arguing that its “defects” are “voluminous,” and that it is legally unsound.Among other things, Mr. Smith’s motion says that the charge of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO — which all 19 defendants face — seeks to “punish protected First Amendment activity” and fails to “sufficiently allege the existence” of a racketeering enterprise whose goal was to overturn Mr. Trump’s narrow 2020 election loss in the state.The Smith filing argues that the racketeering conspiracy laid out by the prosecution was actually “comprised of millions of people throughout the country” who believed election fraud had taken place and were working toward the same goal as the defendants.To illustrate the point, the motion stated that there were probably thousands of bank robbers in the United States, “but the mere fact that they all rob banks and have the same goal and many of the same methods of operation, does not mean that all American bank robbers constitute one RICO enterprise, despite the fact that they are people who commit the same crime, for the same reason.”Mr. Smith’s legal team includes Donald F. Samuel, a veteran Atlanta defense lawyer.The office of the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, who is leading the prosecution, declined to comment on Monday evening ahead of an official response to the motion in court. Mr. Sadow also declined to comment.The filing was the latest legal volley in the case, which Mr. Trump sought to quash even before his indictment in mid-August. It came as little surprise to legal analysts watching the case, who had expected Mr. Trump’s lawyers to mount an aggressive defense long before the start of a trial.The former president’s lawyers have already moved to sever his case from two co-defendants, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, who have demanded a speedy trial. Their joint trial is set to start on Oct. 23.Mr. Smith, a lawyer based in Atlanta who helped Mr. Trump’s team challenge his loss in Georgia after the election, faces a dozen charges in the case. He advanced false claims about the election at a legislative hearing, according to the indictment. And, prosecutors charge, he took part in the efforts to get fake Trump electors to cast votes and sign documents that falsely claimed that he had won the election. Mr. Smith has pleaded not guilty.“He never advocated violence; he never cried ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” his lawyers argued in the motion. “If advocacy in court or the legislature is a crime — if it merits being branded a ‘racketeer’ — there are very few people who will have the courage to risk engaging in such advocacy. ”Chris Timmons, a former prosecutor in the Atlanta area, said on Monday that the motion was unlikely to succeed in court, describing the racketeering enterprise defined in the indictment as “pretty tightly drawn.” But he noted that defense lawyers sometimes filed motions directed more at the court of public opinion, with an eye toward influencing a potential jury pool.Notably, the Smith motion does not excuse all the activity that took place.“If, as the Fulton prosecutors claim, somebody threatened physical harm to an election worker, that might (or should) be prosecuted as a crime,” Mr. Smith’s lawyers write. “The same for stealing computers or information from a computer.”Some defendants in the case were charged with conspiracy to commit computer theft in a breach of a rural Georgia county’s voting system, while others were accused of threatening a poll worker.Mr. Trump may soon follow the lead of several other defendants and ask to have his case moved to federal court, where the jury pool would be somewhat more supportive of him. But on Friday, a U.S. District Court judge rejected such a request from Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, dimming the prospects that others would succeed with the strategy. More

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      Trump Surrenders at Atlanta Jail in Georgia Election Interference Case

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      Mr. Trump spent about 20 minutes at the jail, getting fingerprinted and having his mug shot taken for the first time in the four criminal cases he has faced this year.Former President Donald J. Trump surrendered at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta on Thursday and was booked on 13 felony charges for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.It was an extraordinary scene: a former U.S. president who flew on his own jet to Atlanta and surrendered at a jail compound surrounded by concertina wire and signs that directed visitors to the “prisoner intake” area.As Mr. Trump’s motorcade of black S.U.V.s drove to the jail through cleared streets, preceded by more than a dozen police motorcycles — a trip captured by news helicopters and broadcast live on national television — two worlds collided in ways never before seen in American political history. The nation’s former commander in chief walked into a notorious jail, one that has been cited in rap lyrics and is the subject of a Department of Justice investigation into unsanitary and unsafe conditions, including allegations that an “incarcerated person died covered in insects and filth.”The case is the fourth brought against Mr. Trump this year, but Thursday was the first time that he was booked at a jail.Mr. Trump spent about 20 minutes there, submitting to some of the routines of criminal defendant intake. He was fingerprinted and had his mug shot taken. He was assigned an identification number, P01135809. But the process was faster than for most defendants; minutes after he entered the jail, Mr. Trump’s record appeared in Fulton County’s booking system, which listed him as having “blond or strawberry” hair, a height of 6 feet 3 inches and a weight of 215 pounds — 24 pounds less than the White House doctor reported Mr. Trump weighing in 2018.Mr. Trump’s motorcade arriving at the Fulton County jail.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesHis form was filled out in advance by aides, according to someone familiar with the preparations, not by officials at the jail.Outside, supporters and detractors of Mr. Trump had gathered all day in the swampy Atlanta heat. The news media was kept at bay. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office barred reporters from accessing the parking lot in front of the jail’s main entrance, a break with tradition.Before leaving Atlanta on his plane, Mr. Trump was defiant. The Georgia case, he said, was a “travesty of justice.”“We have every right to challenge an election we think is dishonest,” he said.The former president’s bond in the case was set at $200,000 on Monday, and he used a commercial bondsman, Charles Shaw of Foster Bail Bonds, to post his bond in exchange for $20,000, the bondsman confirmed.In a last minute shake-up of his legal team before he surrendered on Thursday, Mr. Trump hired Steven H. Sadow, a veteran criminal defense lawyer in Atlanta whose clients have included prominent rappers. In a filing to the court, Mr. Sadow said he was now “lead counsel of record for Donald John Trump.”Lawyers on both sides of the case filed a flurry of legal motions on Thursday. After one of the 19 defendants, the lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, demanded a speedy trial, Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is prosecuting the case, asked a judge to set a trial date of Oct. 23, months earlier than she had originally sought.The Fulton County jail in Atlanta.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesMr. Trump objected to that timing, an indication that he wants to move more slowly. The judge approved the October trial date, but only for Mr. Chesebro. The ultimate date of any trial, however, will not be clear until efforts by some of the defendants to move the case to federal court are resolved.Mr. Trump is at the top of the list of 19 defendants in the indictment released last week. Prosecutors used a state version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, that they hope will allow them to show the ways in which Mr. Trump and several of his allies worked together toward the common goal of seeking to overturn the results of the election in Georgia.The RICO statute is often used against the mafia and street gangs. In the Georgia indictment, Mr. Trump and his co-defendants are accused of impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, conspiracy to defraud the state and “acts involving theft,” among other crimes.The indictment lays out the broadest set of accusations leveled against the former president so far. Georgia’s racketeering law can carry criminal penalties of between five and 20 years in prison.It is the second case centered on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Jack Smith, the special counsel, brought the other, a federal case, earlier in August.Ms. Willis began her investigation after a recording of Mr. Trump was released in which he told Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, that he wanted to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than he needed to win the state and its Electoral College votes. Mr. Trump later described the call to Mr. Raffensperger as “absolutely perfect.”Protesters and supporters of Mr. Trump clashed outside the jail ahead of his arrival. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesHis defiance in the face of the four cases lodged against him has provided political oxygen for his campaign and a significant fund-raising windfall.After his first indictment in March, which charged him in a hush-money scheme to cover up a potential sex scandal, Mr. Trump’s campaign reported raising $15 million in the two weeks that followed.In June, an indictment in Miami that centered on classified documents was followed by $7 million in fund-raising, Mr. Trump’s campaign reported.Hours before he was set to be booked on Thursday, Mr. Trump sent out a fund-raising email. “This arrest — and every one of these four sham indictments,” he wrote, “have all been designed to strike fear into the hearts of the American people, to intimidate you out of voting to save your country and ultimately, to interfere in the 2024 election.”In four recent polls, a majority of respondents said the criminal charges against Mr. Trump were warranted. But at the same time, Mr. Trump’s standing among Republican voters is strong, and he is holding onto a considerable lead against his Republican primary rivals.He declined to take part in the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign on Wednesday, which featured eight of Mr. Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination. Bret Baier, one of the debate’s moderators on Fox News, quipped that Mr. Trump was the “elephant not in the room.”A crowd began to gather outside the jail early Thursday morning.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMr. Trump is also neck and neck against President Biden in recent polls. A Quinnipiac University poll this month showed him trailing Mr. Biden by a single percentage point, 47 percent to 46 percent, in a hypothetical rematch. Mr. Biden’s advantage was five percentage points in July.Outside the Fulton County jail, supporters of Mr. Trump came early in the day, hoping for a glimpse of the former president. Rick Hearn, 44, an Atlanta accountant, brought a poster with him that showed an image of Mr. Trump next to one of Nelson Mandela, with the label “political prisoners.”“I feel like I needed to be a part of this,” Mr. Hearn said,“Those in charge,” he added, need to know that they cannot “take away our rights and get away with it.”Alan Feuer More