Pastor Stephen Lee hasn’t had a very good week (and that’s a good thing).
“I can tell you that he’s nervous,” Lee’s attorney, David Shestokas, told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview.
“Anybody charged with a crime that serious—a five-year mandatory minimum, and a possible 20-year maximum—is not going to sleep easy at night, regardless of whatever comfort and counseling I’m able to offer,” Shestokas said, referring to the penalty for violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. “But even under those circumstances, I certainly have no guarantees for him.”
On Monday, a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury indicted Lee, a police chaplain living in the Chicago area, alongside Donald Trump and 17 others for a laundry list of election-related crimes related to the 2020 election. Lee, 70, is facing additional counts on top of the RICO charge, including conspiracy to solicit false statements and writings, criminal attempt to influence witnesses, and influencing witnesses.
Lee is accused of trying to pressure a temporary election worker, Ruby Freeman, to confess to a slew of bogus assertions by Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and other MAGA-world luminaries, that Freeman and her daughter, who are Black, surreptitiously introduced suitcases stuffed with thousands of fake ballots into the counting process to help Joe Biden. Trump referenced Freeman over and over during his infamous Jan. 2, 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, in which he exhorted Raffensperger to “find” enough local votes to undo Biden’s win. Freeman was “a professional vote scammer and hustler,” Trump lied, calling the 60-something Freeman a “known political operative.”
Lots more at:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/nervous-pastor-stephen-lee-swept-up-in-trumps-georgia-indictment