The appearance of videotaped conversations between prosecutors and two attorneys, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, underscores the danger to President Trump posed by erstwhile allies turned state’s witnesses. 

The footage, disclosed by ABC News, appears drawn from portions of proffer sessions Ms. Powell and Ellis held with prosecutors in Georgia as part of that state’s criminal racketeering case. Proffer sessions, where defendants meet with the government and share what they know, are often required as part of plea deals. 

Ms. Powell and Ellis both worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and were charged by the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, with racketeering and other crimes. They both came to agreements with her office that allow them to avoid jail time in exchange for “truthful” testimony. These clips convey why Ms. Willis pursued these agreements. 

Ellis told Fulton County officials that a senior White House official, Dan Scavino, told her in “in an excited tone” that “the boss” — meaning Mr. Trump — “is not going to leave” office. Mr. Scavino allegedly added that “we are just going to stay in power.” Ellis reports that she responded that “it doesn’t work that way,” to which Mr. Scavino added, “We don’t care.”

At one point in Ellis’s conversation with investigators, she alludes to other “relevant” conversations, but appears to be blocked from disclosing them due to attorney-client privilege. The ABC tapes do not appear to capture the full sessions, but merely portions of them. The conversations are meant to be confidential, and would have been distributed to the defendants as part of the government’s discovery obligation. 

The other proffer video features Ms. Powell, who pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor offenses and will also evade jail time. She relates that she told Mr. Trump that “none of our cases were panning out” in respect of efforts to overturn the 2020 election and that “it wasn’t looking good for anything to happen in his direction.”

Ms. Powell said that Mr. Trump’s “instincts told him he had been defrauded, that the election was a big fraud.” She added that she “didn’t think he had lost” the election and that she “saw an avenue pursuant to which, if I was right, he would remain president.” Ms. Powell relates that she never heard Mr. Trump acknowledge that he lost the election. 

Prosecutors will likely comb these proffer videos — and others, hitherto unseen, with two other cooperating defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Scott Hall — for evidence of Mr. Trump’s intent. Ellis’s testimony suggests that the 45th president’s inner circle contemplated keeping Mr. Trump in the White House, but she merely spoke to Mr. Scavino, not Mr. Trump. His attorneys will likely attack that testimony as hearsay.

Ms. Powell’s testimony, or at least the parts of it that have thus far come to light, could end up strengthening Mr. Trump’s hand at trial. To convict the former president, prosecutors will be required to show that he knew the election was lost and persisted in trying to keep himself in the White House anyway. Ms. Powell appears to convey the impression that Mr. Trump never wavered in his belief that he beat President Bident at the polls. 

Mr. Trump’s attorney in Georgia, Steven Sadow, tells ABC News, “The only salient fact to this nonsense line of inquiry is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, and returned to Mar-a-Lago.” He adds that “if this is the type of bogus, ridiculous ‘evidence’ that DA Willis intends to rely upon, it is one more reason that this political, travesty of a case must be dismissed.”