Judge dismisses 6 Georgia charges against Donald Trump, others remain – Atlanta News First
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – The judge overseeing Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ historic Georgia indictment of the nation’s 45th president has dismissed some of the charges against Donald Trump, but others remain.
On Wednesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote that six of the charges in the indictment must be quashed, including three against Trump. But the order leaves intact many other charges in the indictment and McAfee wrote prosecutors could seek a new indictment on the charges he dismissed.
The six charges dismissed were related to soliciting elected officials to violate their oaths of office. That includes two charges related to the phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021.
Wednesday’s ruling was the first time charges in any of Trump’s four criminal cases have been dismissed.
“The Court’s concern is less that the State has failed to allege sufficient conduct of the Defendants — in fact it has alleged an abundance,” McAfee wrote. “However, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned opinion, fatal.
“As written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission, i.e., the underlying felony solicited,” McAfee wrote. “They do not give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, as the Defendants could have violated the Constitutions and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways.”
Order by Lindsey Basye on Scribd
“The Court made the correct legal decision to grant the special demurrers and quash important counts of the indictment brought by DA Fani Willis,” said Steve Sadow, Trump’s Georgia attorney. “The counts dismissed against President Trump are 5, 28 and 38, which falsely claimed that he solicited Georgia public officials to violate their oath of office.
“The ruling is a correct application of the law, as the prosecution failed to make specific allegations of any alleged wrongdoing on those counts. The entire prosecution of President Trump is political, constitutes election interference, and should be dismissed.”
Another of the dismissed counts accuses Trump of soliciting then-Georgia House Speaker David Ralston to violate his oath of office by calling a special session of the legislature to unlawfully appoint presidential electors.
According to the Associated Press, McAfee’s order leaves former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows facing only a RICO charge. The order also quashed three of 13 counts against former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
“There simply was not enough detail to put the defendants on notice of what to defend against,” Giuliani’s Georgia attorney Allyn Stockton told CBS News.
“The quashing of these six counts, three of which were against Mayor Giuliani, was expected,” Stockton said. “Mayor Giuliani was originally indicted on 13 counts and this effectively removes nearly 25% of the charges against him.”
Buddy Parker, an attorney representing Trump co-defendant John Eastman, said: “The court stated clearly the state failed to provide what exactly in the U.S. and Georgia constitutions the defendants solicited the public figures to violate, a clear error. We await the state’s position on its intention in moving forward on the remaining charges.”
Legal experts who spoke to Atlanta News First on Wednesday seemed content with the ruling’s logic.
“What you need to say is, you need to say what part of the constitution was alleged to have been violated so we can focus on that,” said local attorney Suri Chadha-Jimenez. “That is akin to telling me, ‘You are going to trial because you broke the law.’ Which law? Tell me what I did, because that way I can present an alibi, I can present defenses, I can say whether or not I was justified.”
McAfee wrote that prosecutors could seek a reindictment to supplement the six dismissed counts. Even if the statute of limitations has expired, the judge gave the state six months to resubmit the case to a grand jury. Prosecutors could also ask for permission to appeal the ruling. The case has yet to be scheduled for trial.
McAfee has yet to issue a ruling over whether DA Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade should be disqualified from their investigation and subsequent indictment of Trump.
Willis is the locally elected district attorney who issued dozens of indictments in August 2023 accusing the nation’s 45th president and his allies of trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
But now, Willis is facing allegations she misused taxpayer funds and crossed ethical boundaries during her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. McAfee is expected to soon decide whether they should be disqualified from further participating in the case.
Trump and 18 of his GOP allies were indicted by Willis and her office in August 2023 on charges they engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. That election saw Joe Biden become the first Democrat to carry a deep Southern state in a presidential election since Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992.
On Tuesday, Trump secured an historic third consecutive GOP White House nomination with his presidential primary wins in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington state. President Biden also won his party’s Georgia and Mississippi primaries, thus securing his renomination bid as well.
The Nov. 5, 2024, contest will be the first presidential election rematch since 1956.
In 1952, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson after then-President Harry Truman chose not to run for a second full term. Four years later, Democrats again nominated Stevenson for the presidency, which led to a second defeat at then-President Eisenhower’s hands.
No GOP presidential contender has ever been nominated for three consecutive elections; Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was elected president in 1885 and served only one term before being elected to a second term four years later (1885-1889 and 1893-1897). President Franklin Delano Roosevelt holds the record for the most nominations: four.
This story is developing.
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