Georgia prosecutor drops 2020 election interference case against Trump
A Georgia prosecutor has dropped a 2020 election interference case against President Donald Trump.
Pete Skandalakis initially filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which accused Trump and others of conspiring to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results in favor of Joe Biden.
The state charges were the last remaining criminal case against the US president stemming from the 2020 election. District attorney Fani Willis originally brought the case, but was removed from the case by the state supreme court after a personal scandal.
“A fair and impartial prosecutor put an end to this law,” one of Trump’s lawyers said in response to the dismissal.
Willis was removed from the case after the court ruled that a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor assigned to the case created “the appearance of impropriety.”
Skandalakis, executive director of the Georgia Council of Prosecuting Attorneys, a nonpartisan organization, appointed himself to the case after Willis was disqualified and other state prosecutors refused to take the case.
In a motion filed with a Fulton County judge on Wednesday, Skandalakis said he was halting the case “to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial certainty.”
“As a former elected official who ran as both a Democrat and a Republican and is currently the Executive Director of a non-partisan agency, this decision is not driven by a desire to advance an agenda, but is based on my beliefs and understanding of the law,” Skandalakis said. added Skandalakis.
Willis began investigating the case in February 2021 after the Washington Post published a recording of Trump’s conversation with the state’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump can be heard saying in his call on January 2, 2021. That was the margin by which he lost the state to Joe Biden.
Willis filed an indictment in August 2023 alleging that Trump conspired with 18 other defendants to interfere with the election outcome. The charges included racketeering and other state crimes.
The group “refused to accept that Trump had lost and knowingly and willfully participated in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.”
The four defendants, including attorneys Sidney Powell, Kenneth Cheseboro and Jenna Ellis, struck plea deals with prosecutors that often resulted in fines, suspended sentences and community service.
Wednesday’s impeachment also affects the remaining other defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump’s former lawyer, and Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff during his first presidency.
Steve Sadow, President Trump’s lead attorney on the case, praised the decision to dismiss the case.
“The political persecution of President Trump by disqualified Prosecutor Fani Willis has finally ended,” he said. “This case should never have been filed.”
The Georgia election interference case was once seen as the most threatening of Trump’s four criminal charges because he would not be able to pardon himself from state-level charges if he returned to office. The U.S. Supreme Court gave Trump broad immunity from federal investigations of what he described as official actions, but that ruling did not extend to state-level cases.
Prosecutors took Trump to the Fulton County Jail, where they took his mugshot. (The president’s supporters adopted this image and later used it in campaign merchandise.)
However, legal experts who follow the case closely were not surprised by the rejection of the case. The growing blackmail case resulted in thousands of deductions; A judge dropped many charges in 2024, and Willis was disqualified a few months later.
Willis’ dismissal has raised doubts about whether his replacement would require such a complex investigation. Trump’s election put the situation on hold until his term ends in 2029.
“It was incredibly unlikely that it would move forward anyway, because the amount of financial resources and man hours required to take on this case did not seem to be within the scope of Peter Skandalakis,” said Anthony Michael Kries, a professor at Georgia State College of Law.
But Mr. Kries was surprised by some of Mr. Skandalakis’ reasons for dropping the case.
“I think the report itself is a little bit more surprising to me because it seems to give the President and some of his allies a lot of the benefit of the doubt, given what the evidence put forward looks like,” he said.
