A Georgia prosecutor has dropped the 2020 election-interference case against President Donald Trump.
Pete Skandalakis filed a motion to dismiss the case that initially accused Trump and others of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state in favor of Joe Biden.
The state charges were the last remaining criminal legal case against a US president arising from the 2020 election. It was first brought by District Attorney Fani Willis, but the state Supreme Court removed her from the case after a personal scandal.
A lawyer for Trump said in response to the dismissal, “A fair and impartial prosecutor has overruled this statute.”
Willis was removed from the case because the court determined that a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor assigned to the case created “the appearance of impropriety.”
Scandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council, a nonpartisan agency of Georgia, appointed himself to the case after Willis’s disqualification and when other state prosecutors declined to take the case.
In Wednesday’s motion to a Fulton County judge, Skandalakis said he was closing the case “to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality.”
“As a former elected official who ran as both a Democrat and Republican and is now the executive director of a non-partisan agency, this decision is not guided by a desire to advance an agenda, but is based on my beliefs and understanding of the law,” Scandalakis said.
Willis began investigating the matter in February 2021 after the Washington Post published a recording of Trump’s conversation with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In the call on January 2, 2021, Trump is heard saying, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” It was this difference on the basis of 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 results. The charges included fraud and other state crimes.
The group “refused to acknowledge that Trump lost, and that they knowingly and knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor”.
The dismissal of the case also includes charges against 18 of Trump’s co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and Trump’s former lawyer, and Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff during his first presidency.
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