By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
Lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, widely regarded as the mastermind behind the failed plot to use fake electors to overturn the 2020 election and install Donald Trump as president, has been disbarred or suspended from practicing law in five states.
But in Georgia, where Chesebro pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy charge in 2023, a state court judge later declared him “exonerated of guilt.” The judge reasoned that Chesebro was a first offender; besides, his probation had been terminated early.
On Thursday the Florida Supreme Court joined Georgia in supporting 65-year-old Chesebro, a Florida-licensed lawyer since 2009. The court ruled 6-1 to reject a Bar referee’s suggested 30-day suspension and, instead, reprimanded Chesebro and ordered him to attend the Florida Bar’s Ethics School.
“This is not a legal opinion, it’s a political statement,” said Stephen Hanlon, a prominent civil rights lawyer who practiced in Florida for 47 years before moving to St. Louis, Missouri in 2023.
“It’s not the first time this has ever happened,” he said. “It tends to happen with a little more frequency in Florida.”
Justice Jorge Labarga dissented from the majority decision.
“Chesebro does not dispute that he submitted fraudulent ballot information to the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia,” he wrote. “In my view, the intentional commission of fraud upon the court is one of the most egregious ethical transgressions a lawyer can commit, and such serious misconduct necessitates the imposition of severe professional sanctions.”
“Because the discharge of Chesebro’s conviction … does not undo his admitted act of misconduct, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that suspension is inappropriate,” Labarga wrote.
SIX JUSTICES OK CHESEBRO
In an unsigned opinion, the other six justices cited the court’s responsibility to both sanction lawyer misconduct and “respect the judgements of other states under principles of comity.”
“We must fashion a remedy appropriate to the unique facts of this case and, after careful deliberation, find that a reprimand is appropriate,” the opinion says. “Suspension or a more serious sanction would have been fitting had Chesebro not been exonerated under the distinct circumstance presented here; Chesebro’s full discharge under the Georgia First Offender Act, however, is a fact we do not ignore.”
Chesebro was charged in Georgia with working with Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and a dozen others to fashion a detailed plan to disrupt the lawful transfer of power in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. The Harvard-trained lawyer took the lead in drafting memos in December 2020 about deploying alternate slates of electors in swing states.
The idea was to invalidate legitimate elector votes with the votes of “alternate” or fake electors, giving then-Vice President Mike Pence a reason to delay the Jan. 6 certification of Joe Biden’s victory or declare Trump the winner because he had more uncontested votes.
After Trump’s reelection in November 2024, the Georgia election interference case was dismissed.
The five states where Chesebro can no longer practice law are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois and California. All of the states’ disciplinary actions were related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
However, Chesebro remains a member in good standing of the State Bar of Texas. His LinkedIn profile says he’s an appellate lawyer based in Austin, Texas. His Florida Bar profile lists his address as a post office box in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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