State of New York
Supreme Court, Appellate Division
Third Judicial Department
Decided and Entered: October 31, 2024 PM-213-24
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In the Matter of KENNETH JOHN
CHESEBRO, an Attorney.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
ON MOTION
(Attorney Registration No. 4497913)
Calendar Date: October 10, 2024
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PM-213-24 Chesebro.pdfThirty five years ago I picked up the Saturday morning New York Times and saw a squib that the Supreme Court had accepted a case Jason Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. The appeal challenged the admission of evidence that an anti-nausea drug Bendectin blocked the development of healthy bone in utero. The claim was plausible but plaintiffs' experts could point to no definitive statistical or widely accepted opinion evidence to establish a causal connection. Junk Science! was the battle cry of pharmaceutical companies eager to avoid liability - particularly for such dramatic injuries.
I dialed long distance information and got the number of the lawyer who had filed the petition for certiorari. - Kenneth Chesebro, a young protege of Harvard's lion of constitutional law Laurence Tribe.
I had represented trial lawyers and the CIO in similar challenges in New Jersey. I cited our successes and volunteered my time. That began months of work on a team of lawyers and law professors mustered by the plaintiffs trial lawyers organization Association of Trial Lawyers of America.
Chesebro was a principal brief writer for Georgetown professor Michael Gottesman. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion calling for trial judges to be "gatekeepers" but not final judges of the facts. The case established the framework used to this day in Federal Rule of Evidence 702. Expert opinion testimony must be based on reliable principles and methods" which are "reliably applied" to the facts of the case. The transformation of jury trial into battles of experts was complete.
Despite his Massachusetts Avenue office and Harvard pedigree Chesebro drifted into the Trump orbit. He was in the January 6, 2021 crowd at the Capitol which disrupted the legal transfer of power. He helped devise and implement scheme to submit as valid a slate of unsuccessful Georgia electors who were pledged to Donald J. Trump, the defeated candidate for President. Indicted as a co-conspirator of the former President, Chesebro pleaded guilty rather than face trial. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court has declared
Count 15 of the indictment alleged that respondent, along with Donald] Trump, [Rudy] Giuliani, John Eastman and others, unlawfully conspired in Georgia between December 6, 2020 and December 14, 2020 to knowingly file, enter and record a document entitled "Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Georgia," in a court of the US, while having reason to know that the document contained a materially false statement. Specifically, the Certificate wrongfully stated that the signatories thereof were "the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Georgia." Additionally, count 15 alleged that defendants David Shafer, Shawn Micah Tresher Still, and Cathleen Alston Latham – but notably not respondent – acting as co-conspirators, had placed in the US mail a document addressed to the Chief Judge of the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, with such act being an overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy.
His career in ruins Chesebro, who now resides in Puerto Rico finds himself unable to practice law in Massachusetts,, California, Florida, and Illinois.
