'We are just going to stay in power': new revelations from Trump's Georgia case

WASHINGTON — A top aide to Donald Trump told a member of the then-president’s legal team that Trump had no intention of leaving the White House after his 2020 election loss, even as campaign lawyers said he had no chance of overturning the vote, according to leaked confidential testimony provided to Georgia prosecutors.

“The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances,” Dan Scavino, a top Trump White House official, said to attorney Jenna Ellis, according to portions of her filmed testimony that were obtained by ABC News. “We are just going to stay in power.”

Ellis provided the testimony as part of a deal with prosecutors in which she pleaded guilty over her role in a sprawling Georgia election interference case  and agreed to testify against other defendants. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis originally charged 19 people – including Trump and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani – with participating in a broad conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election.

How do comments from Dan Scavino to Jenna Ellis impact the Georgia election case against Trump?

Despite the incendiary nature of the comments about Trump leaving office after losing, an attorney for Trump dismissed their relevance to the Georgia case.

“Any purported private conversation is absolutely meaningless,” Trump attorney Steve Sadow said in a statement provided to USA TODAY.  “The only salient and telling fact is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.”

Trump’s legal team could argue at trial that, as hearsay, the comments are inadmissible, while prosecutors may want to introduce them to help prove Trump actually conspired to remain in office after his loss.

Willis' prosecutors may be able to get the comments into trial by showing Scavino was a co-conspirator, even though he isn’t charged in the case, Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said. Under Georgia law, statements of an unindicted co-conspirator are exempt from the hearsay rule. “If prosecutors make that showing – and I expect that they will easily be able to, based on the public record − this hearsay will become admissible against Trump,” said Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020 during Trump’s second impeachment trial.

An attorney for Scavino declined to comment.

In addition to the Georgia case, Trump also faces federal indictments in Miami and Washington over his alleged hoarding and mishandling of confidential documents and alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The Manhattan district attorney has charged him with filing false business documents in an effort to hide alleged hush-money payments to an adult film actress.

Video release 'intended to intimidate,' prosecutor says

Several Georgia defendants have now taken plea deals and agreed to testify for the district attorney’s office, including three lawyers: Ellis, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro.

After the video clips were published, Willis renewed a request for the Superior Court of Fulton County to seal materials in the case, stating that her office hadn't released the recordings to anyone except the defendants.

"The release of these confidential video recordings is clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case, subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial, constitutes indirect communication about the facts of this case with codefendants and witnesses, and obstructs the administration of justice, in violation of the conditions of release imposed on each defendant," Willis said in the motion.

Willis vowed not to hand over further video recordings of the testimony provided under the plea deals, saying defendants would need to come to her office to view them.

The district attorney urged the court to temporarily prohibit disclosure of case materials, schedule an emergency hearing on the issue, and then make that prohibition permanent.

'We don't care'

According to the video provided to ABC, Ellis told prosecutors that, at a Dec. 19, 2020, White House Christmas party, she apologetically told Scavino the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the election were running out of road and that the election "was essentially over."

"And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, 'Well, we don't care, and we're not going to leave,'" Ellis told prosecutors. "And I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said 'Well, the boss', meaning President Trump – and everyone understood 'the boss,' that's what we all called him – he said, 'The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.'"

"And I said to him, 'Well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize?'” Ellis recalled

“And he said, 'We don't care.'"

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: In Trump Georgia case, a new revelation about final days of presidency