The disclosure of hand-written notes of apology to the citizens of Georgia — each just one line — from two of President Trump’s lawyers, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, throws into cursive relief how their guilty pleas and cooperation agreements appear to have an element that is grudging.

The letter-writing was mandated by bargains struck between the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, and the attorneys accused of racketeering and aiding Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. To avoid the possibility of prison, Ms. Powell and Chesebro pleaded guilty to lesser crimes and agreed to testify “truthfully” should prosecutors call on them. 

The deals secured by Ms. Powell and Chesebro also involved probation, fines, and those letters, which were meant to convey contrition. While the letter of a third defendant, Scott Hall, is more fulsome — not to mention typed on a computer — the minimalist scrawls of the two attorneys could telegraph a recalcitrance that could, in turn, pose more serious challenges to Ms. Willis when it comes to their testimony.

The attorney who promised to “release the Kraken” in order to find evidence of voter fraud after the last presidential election, Ms. Powell, was charged with racketeering and efforts to gain access to voting machines at Coffee County. Her note reads, “I apologize for my actions in connection with the events at Coffee County.” 

Chesebro is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a one-time protégé of one of the most prolific of liberal legal lions, Laurence Tribe. He appears not to have channeled that training in wordsmithing in his letter, which reads, in a looping script, “I apologize to the citizens of Georgia and Fulton County for my involvement in Count 15 of the indictment.” 

That count is conspiring to file false documents. Ms. Willis alleged that Chesebro was a leader of the effort to put forward so-called “alternative electors” who would pledge their votes to Mr. Trump notwithstanding President Biden’s narrow victory in the state.  

While it is possible that neither Ms. Powell nor Chesebro felt like writing a whole megilla to the people of Georgia, their bare minimum approach could signal a broader strategy. Like most cooperating witnesses, they are likely eager to keep their deals — they are contracts, with all the legal force that implies — intact while also not delivering more to prosecutors than is required. 

Once a plea deal is entered and finalized in court — as these ones have been, it cannot be unilaterally withdrawn by prosecutors. Either side, though, can allege a breach, a process that unfolds in a similar fashion to disputes over commercial contracts. It falls to a judge to decide whether one or both parties have been faithful to the terms of the deal.    

Ms. Willis expects more of her original 19 defendants to strike a deal in the coming months, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “What I have seen in my practice for these 28 years that I’ve been practicing criminal law is that typically it is after (pretrial) motions when you’ll get the most amount of pleas.” The behaviors of Ms. Powell and Chesebro could set precedents. 

If those two have turned taciturn, it is likely because Georgia is not the only jurisdiction of concern to the attorneys. They are both unindicted co-conspirators in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 indictment of Mr. Trump. Anything they tell Ms. Willis could be of great interest to the special counsel, who could either marshal their testimony against the 45th president or potentially charge them himself.

The cursory efforts from Ms. Powell and Chesebro stand in marked contrast to the approach of another one of Ms. Willis’s defendants turned cooperating witnesses, Jenna Ellis. She read her letter aloud in court as she fought back tears. She confessed that “in the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence.”