ATLANTA, GA (TIP): An Atlanta-area judge has thrown out two more charges against former president Donald Trump and a third against several of his allies in a sprawling election interference case accusing them of criminally conspiring to try to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee stopped short in two rulings issued Thursday of dismissing the entire indictment, which Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) sought in August 2023 under Georgia’s racketeering statute. All the remaining defendants, including Trump, still stand accused of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy for their efforts after the 2020 election.
Trump now faces eight charges, down from 13 in the original indictment.
The ruling comes at a time when the fate of the Georgia case is in flux. The case became mired in controversy earlier this year when Trump and eight other defendants accused Willis and the lead prosecutor on the case of misconduct related to their romantic relationship.
McAfee declined to remove Willis or her office from the case, a decision that the defendants have appealed. Attorneys for Trump have also accused Willis, who is Black, of “repeated public display of racial animus” toward the former president and his co-defendants, which they contend has jeopardized Trump’s right to a fair trial.
The entire case has been essentially frozen since June. Whether it will be scheduled for trial any time soon likely depends on whether Trump wins the presidential election this year.
In Thursday’s ruling, McAfee dismissed the three charges under the supremacy clause, which prohibits state prosecutions of activities that fall under federal jurisdiction.
“The Supremacy Clause declares that state law must yield to federal law when the two conflict,” McAfee wrote.
The charges — filing false documents, attempting to file false documents and criminally conspiring to file false documents — all relate to the meeting of 16 Trump electors on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast electoral votes for the incumbent president even though he had lost the state. The electors signed certificates that were mailed to the National Archives, Congress and federal court, actions that Willis said amounted to forgery.
“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again,” Trump’s lawyer in the case, Steve Sadow, said in an email.
The motion to dismiss under the supremacy clause was brought by just two of Trump’s co-defendants, John Eastman, a lawyer who advised Trump and his allies on how he could prevail during the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, and Shawn Still, one of Trump’s electors who convened at the Georgia Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020.
But the ruling applies to any of those charged under three counts that McAfee dismissed, including two other Trump electors, David Shafer and Cathy Latham, as well as five additional campaign allies or lawyers: Rudy Giuliani, Ken Chesebro, Robert Cheeley, Ray Smith and Michael Roman.
Separately Thursday, McAfee rejected a motion from Eastman and Still to toss the entire indictment on the grounds that it relied on an overly broad reading of the state’s racketeering statute.
McAfee’s ruling came six months after he dismissed three other charges against Trump and some of his allies related to a pressure campaign that the former president and five of his co-defendants put on state officials to change the 2020 results in Georgia.
In his March ruling on those counts, McAfee agreed with lawyers for Trump and the others that prosecutors had failed “to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission, i.e., the underlying felony solicited.”
As he did on Thursday, McAfee denied motions to throw the entire indictment out. Fulton County prosecutors have appealed McAfee’s March ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals.
(Source: Washington Post)