The Rev. Stephen Cliffgard Lee, the Orland Park-based minister who was named last month along with 18 others in a criminal indictment that includes former President Donald Trump, is awaiting word on if his case will remain linked to those of Trump and most of his fellow defendants as two others named in the indictment prepare to begin their trials in one month.
Sidney Powell and Kenneth Cheesebro will begin their trials Oct. 23 after Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County, Georgia, accepted their request for a speedy trial and agreed last week to have their cases jointly severed from those of the other defendants.
Lee’s legal team, led by Illinois-based lawyer David Shestokas, has similarly filed a severance request and is waiting to hear back, Shestokas confirmed
“We are of the opinion that, on a couple of levels, Pastor Lee will be prejudiced by having his trial take place with everybody else,” Shestokas said. Shestokas is working on the case with Georgia-based lawyer David Oles.
When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought the case spanning 41 total charges, 150 witnesses and 19 defendants including a former U.S. president launching an election campaign, questions immediately arose over how these cases would be argued in a timely and fair manner. Prosecutors said they would be ready to hear the cases all together in late October.
However, in his statement last Thursday, Judge McAfee called this case a “herculean task” that would best handled if the defendants are not tried all at the same time with trial dates reasonably spread out.
While all 19 defendants are alike in that they all share a primary charge of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, there are differences in the additional 40 counts brought against them. Cases in which defendants are facing similar charges will most likely be joined together and severed from cases involving defendants who share the anti-racketeering charge but whose cases differ in other ways.
Lee’s team has asked that his case be joined with two other defendants and severed from the 16 other individuals. The two defendants Lee’s council asked to be joined share three of the five charges brought against Lee and are all facing charges relating to a similar episode in which they are accused of attempting to alter the testimony of a Georgia poll worker.
The two people who Lee hopes to remain joined with are Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti and Harrison Floyd, who led a group called Black Voices for Trump. Shestokas said their request for severance on Lee’s behalf was not made in conjunction with legal representatives of Kutti or Floyd. Kutti and the legal team for Floyd did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Willis also did not respond to a request for comment.
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Shestokas is hopeful that McAfee, who said “severance is an absolute necessity” to most effectively hear this case, will allow Lee’s case to be severed in the way he and Oles have requested.
While McAfee has not given a date for the trial proceedings of Lee or any of the other defendants beyond Powell and Cheesebro, a footnote on McAfee’s written statement from last week said a second trial could begin as early as “November/December.”
Shestokas, who is working in a pro-bono capacity for Lee, said he expects the massive amount of evidence, witness testimony and an expected package of two terabytes of information to sift through will be a challenge for the legal team.
“We’re due to have what would be the first completion of discovery by the 6th of October,” Shestokas said. “That’s the only hard deadline we have at the moment.”
As he awaits decisions on his severance request and a court date, Lee continues his role as an interim pastor at Living Word Lutheran Church in Orland Park.