Arrr, Georgia judge be spillin' the beans 'bout law and them scallywags Trump and Biden. Listen up, me hearties!
2024-03-13
Arr matey! Thar be good news on the horizon! Georgia judge Scott McAfee be tossin' out six charges against former President Donald Trump and his crew. 'Tis a temporary victory for the scallywags, but we'll keep a weather eye on 'em!
A judge in Georgia has thrown out, at least for the time being, six of the 41 counts in the state RICO indictment that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis filed against former president Donald Trump and 18 others. In his 9-page ruling, Judge Scott McAfee dismissed six charges, which allege that Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and others solicited state officials to violate the terms of their oaths of office. The ruling does not disturb the remaining 35 counts, including the RICO charge. (RICO refers to the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, an analogue of the federal RICO statute).In connection with the six charges at issue, the indictment alleges, in very general terms, that the defendants solicited Georgia legislators and/or election officials (mainly, the secretary of state) to do the following: Unlawfully appoint presidential electors, unlawfully influence the certified election returns, and unlawfully decertify the election. Judge McAfee ruled that the indictment is defective on these charges because it does not specify what term of the oath of office the state officials in question were being asked to violate.The judge reasoned that the constitutions of Georgia and the United States, which state officials swear to uphold, contain numerous clauses that impose myriad responsibilities on office holders. In my view, the solicitation counts are among the most pernicious in Willis’s indictment. Americans have a constitutional right to petition government. But it has never been the law that the people who encourage a public official to take controversial or even lawless action are subjected to felony prosecution for solicitation. Georgia, like every state, has legal processes by which the results of elections may be challenged.Finally, the charges that McAfee dismissed are not necessarily out of the case. Judge McAfee is currently considering a defense motion to disqualify District Attorney Willis and Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade from further participation in the case. A decision on disqualification could come by the end of this week. Judge McAfee did not allude to the disqualification controversy in Wednesday’s ruling on the dismissal of various charges.