A prominent attorney who advocated for then-President Donald Trump’s false stolen election claims in 2020 will be a witness for the prosecution in Georgia’s criminal case against Trump and 18 others, according to a court filing.
“L. Lin Wood is a witness for the State,” prosecutors from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office revealed in a filing Wednesday.
Wood, who resigned from the Georgia bar in July amid a disciplinary probe, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Willis’ office also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a post on social media Wednesday, Wood insisted that he had not “flipped” on Trump.
“I support President Trump 117%!” he wrote on Telegram, adding “I have no idea why I was subpoenaed by the DA.”
Wood said he hadn’t been in contact with Willis’s office since he testified before a grand jury last year, but that he’s been subpoenaed to testify in the case against one of the defendants, Sidney Powell.
“I do know that whatever the DA asks me, I will speak the TRUTH. And I have NO knowledge of TRUTH that can be used in any way against President Trump,” he wrote.
Wood embraced and promoted Trump’s bogus election claims, and was involved in two lawsuits challenging the election results in Georgia. In one of those cases he was listed as being a part of the same legal team as Trump attorney Powell, one of the 19 defendants in Willis’ election case.
Powell and another lawyer who’d been advising Trump, Kenneth Chesebro, are scheduled to stand trial next month. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Wood had faced possible charges in the election case, according to a special grand jury report that was unsealed earlier this month.
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The special grand jury that had been impaneled by Willis to help investigate the sprawling case had recommended indicting Wood for his part in the “national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” including Georgia, the document shows, but Willis declined to bring charges against him.
Wood had testified before the panel last year.
“I’ve got nothing to hide, so I’ll go down and talk to them,” he told The New York Times last year, adding, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Wood’s status as a witness was disclosed in a filing outlining possible conflicts of interest for lawyers who have clients in the current case.
The filing noted that Harry McDougald, who is defending former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark in the case, had worked with Powell and Wood in one of the election cases and was Wood’s co-counsel in another.
The filing also identified 11 other people, as well as members of the state Election Board and General Assembly, as witnesses for the prosecution, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his wife Patricia, and former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan. Prosecutors have said they plan to call about 150 witnesses in the case.
Anthony Cusumano contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
