Judge tosses some charges against former President Trump, others in 2020 Georgia election case
Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee presides in court, Friday, March, 1, 2024, in Atlanta. The hearing is to determine whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be removed from the case because of a relationship with Nathan Wade, special prosecutor she hired in the election interference case against former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool)
A judge in Fulton County, Georgia, has tossed out several counts brought against former President Donald Trump and five others in the case involving an alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The brief order from Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee states that six of the counts in the 41-count indictment returned by a Fulton County grand jury in August must be quashed. Of those six counts, Trump was charged with three of them.
Joining Trump in the challenge to the six counts were former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Ray Stallings Smith and Robert Cheeley.
All had pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them.
The six counts relate to various alleged attempts to solicit state officials to violate their oaths of office, both to the Georgia Constitution and the U.S. Constitution. The judge wrote that the state failed to specify what those violations were, saying the allegations were “so generic as to compel this Court” to quash the six charges.
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lawyer, said the court’s decision to quash the counts is the correct one.
“The ruling is a correct application of the law, as the prosecution failed to make specific allegations of any alleged wrongdoing on those counts,” he said in a statement. “The entire prosecution of President Trump is political, constitutes election interference, and should be dismissed.”
Trump was charged with 13 counts in the sprawling racketeering case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in August. He has pleaded not guilty. Eighteen others were charged alongside the former president for their roles in an alleged scheme to reverse the results of Georgia’s election, but four have since accepted plea deals.
McAfee’s order comes while he is weighing a separate request from Trump and eight of his co-defendants to disqualify Willis and her office from prosecuting the case because of an alleged improper relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade, one of the special prosecutors working with the district attorney’s office.
