Posted on 09/12/24
| News Source: WBAL TV
A judge on Thursday threw out three charges in the sweeping Georgia election subversion case, including two charges that former President Donald Trump faces.
The decision hasn’t yet been formally applied to Trump because his case has been paused pending appeals.
In a separate ruling, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee also upheld the marquee racketeering charge in the case, which Trump is also facing.
Trump lawyer Steve Sadow hailed the rulings as a victory.
“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again,” Sadow said in a statement. “The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed.”
McAfee threw out one count of filing false documents and one count of conspiring to file false documents, both stemming from the Trump campaign’s efforts to put forward a slate of fake GOP electors in Georgia. Trump was only named in the conspiracy count.
In the ruling, McAfee also threw out a separate count of filing false documents, which Trump was charged with. That count relates to untrue statements about supposed voter fraud that were included in one of Trump’s lawsuits in December 2020 that attempted to negate the election results.
These rulings only narrowly took effect for former Trump lawyer John Eastman and Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, who were involved in the 2020 fake electors plot. Their cases are not currently paused. Trump was only named in two of the three charges that McAfee threw out Thursday.
The awkward ruling from McAfee comes as he has only partial jurisdiction over the 2020 election meddling case. Trump and most of his remaining co-defendants are seeking to have an appeals court disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from overseeing the case. So, their cases are paused with McAfee, who presides in a lower court. But two defendants, Eastman and Still, opted to move ahead with their cases in the lower court rather than join the appeal over whether Willis should be prosecuting the case.
Willis, a Democrat, originally secured a 13-count indictment against Trump last summer, related to his multi-pronged attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat in the Peach State. McAfee already threw out three of Trump’s charges in March.
Willis’ office declined to comment. McAfee’s chambers did not immediately return a request for additional clarification.