Georgia election interference case against Trump is dropped : NPR

The landmark Georgia criminal case against President Trump and more than a dozen of his associates for trying to overturn the 2020 election results has officially ended.

“The case is dismissed in its entirety,” Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee ordered Wednesday.

Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, moved to end the prosecution against the remaining defendants after taking over the case from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was disqualified by a court late last year.

“The criminal conduct alleged in the Atlanta Judicial Circuit’s prosecution was conceived in Washington, DC, and not in the State of Georgia,” Skandalakis wrote in his motion to dismiss. “The federal government is the appropriate venue for this prosecution, not the state of Georgia.”

The prosecution was the last outstanding criminal case against Trump, after a pair of federal prosecutions — one focused on efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the other related to his handling of classified documents — were dropped after Trump returned to the White House earlier this year.

“The political harassment of President Trump by disqualified DA Fani Willis has finally ended,” Trump’s Georgia lawyer Steve Sadow wrote on Twitter.

The Fulton County DA’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

historical indictment

In Georgia, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023 in a sweeping racketeering case alleging a conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.

The case was partly motivated by a recorded phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, in which he asked him to “find” 11,780 votes, which was one more than Trump’s margin of defeat in Georgia.

Following the grand jury indictment, Trump and his co-defendants were booked into the Fulton County Jail. Most, including Trump, pleaded not guilty to the charges. Four approved plea deals – and they remain binding.

The sweeping case was headed toward trial when lawyers for one of Trump’s co-defendants filed a motion to dismiss the case based on a surprising claim: The district attorney engaged in an inappropriate personal relationship with a special prosecutor she assigned to the case.

Willis acknowledged that the relationship existed, but also said it had no bearing on the case.

Judge McAfee ultimately ruled that Willis could remain in office if the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, resigned. But a few months later, the Georgia Court of Appeals overturned that decision, removing Willis and her office from the case. The Georgia Supreme Court later declined to hear an appeal, allowing the removal to stand.

Skandalakis, a non-partisan official charged by Georgia law with appointing a special prosecutor, announced in November that he would take the case himself after being unable to recruit someone else to handle the case.

“It is important that someone makes a decision on this matter,” Skandalakis said in an interview in September. “It’s important to the public, frankly to the nation, to the defendants, to all interested parties.”

This did not mean that his decision would be to proceed with the prosecution. While the state charges were separate in a way that the charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department were not, Trump’s lawyers had argued that the case could not continue until he leaves office in 2029.

The decision to now drop the charges completely means the case will still not proceed further.

“This decision will not be universal”

Skandalakis said that when making a decision, he would carefully review the indictment, statute and case files, which include 101 banker boxes of documents and an 8-terabyte hard drive containing the entire investigation file.

Options Scandalakis could consider included dropping charges against Trump but continuing the case against some or all of his co-defendants, or going back to the grand jury for a superseding or updated indictment. The statute of limitations in Georgia is four years for most felony charges and five years for fraud charges.

While cases against some Trump associates involved in efforts to overturn the election continue in other state courts, this decision brings to a close one of the most high-profile and wide-reaching prosecutions.

The Georgia case focuses on Trump’s unsuccessful campaign to collect a list of voters, access sensitive voting machine data and pressure state officials to interfere in the election outcome despite Biden’s victory. Trump has long called the prosecution “political witchcraft.”

“I recognize that, given the deep political divisions in our country, this decision will not be universally popular,” Skandalakis wrote, adding that his family received threats after he took over the case.

He further stated, “The role of the prosecutor is not to satisfy public opinion or achieve universal approval; such a goal is both unattainable and irrelevant to the proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion.” “My evaluation of this case is guided solely by the evidence, the law and the principles of justice.”