The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case dismissed some of the charges against former President Donald Trump, but many other counts remained in the indictment.
Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court ruled in an order that six of the indictment's counts, including three against Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for 2024, must be dismissed.
However, the order leaves other charges intact, and the judge stated that prosecutors could seek a new indictment on the charges he dismissed.
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The decision is a setback for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose case was already on shaky ground due to an attempt to have her removed from the prosecution over her romantic relationship with a colleague.
It's the first time charges in any of Trump's four criminal cases have been dropped, with the judge citing prosecutors' failure to provide sufficient details about the alleged crime.
The six contested charges relate to pressuring public servants to break their oaths of office.
Two charges pertain to Trump's phone conversation on January 2, 2021, with fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's secretary of state.
DA Fani Willis
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Monday that earlier testimony provided by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her lover, Nathan Wade, was “in tatters.”
Multiple witnesses came forward contradicting the testimonies of Wade and Willis as to when their relationship started, along with data from Wade’s cell phone. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said he would rule on the matter by March 15 following a series of hearings during which attorneys for Trump and other defendants outlined their case for Willis’ removal from the case.
Turley said it was obvious that Willis and Wade had not been truthful about their relationship.
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“I think the court is going to have to recognize that the testimony of these two prosecutors was really left in tatters,” Turley told Fox News host Harris Faulkner. “It seems clear to many of us that Nathan Wade did not answer truthfully in his divorce proceedings when asked if he had a sexual relationship during the course of his marriage up to the point in which he filed his answer. He insists he simply read that in a rather strange and narrow way.”
Willis and Wade claimed in court documents that their relationship did not start until 2022.
Willis secured an indictment against Trump and other defendants, including former campaign aide Michael Roman, in August over the former president’s efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, which Joe Biden won by less than 12,000 votes.
Attorneys for Roman filed a motion for Willis’s disqualification on Jan. 8, alleging that Willis, who hired Wade as a special prosecutor to help probe and prosecute the former president, was in a romantic relationship with Wade. Willis denied wrongdoing in a Jan. 14 address at Big Bethel AME Church, accusing her critics of “playing the race card” while falsely claiming she paid the outside prosecutors the same rate.
“Willis is also standing contradicted,” Turley continued. “The new evidence involving cell phones show in one case, these pings, these locational data points, showing Wade going to the area of Willis’ home, being there for hours and then returning along the same path in the early morning and on either end of that are calls or texts to Willis. That seems to shatter her denial that they had this pre-existing relationship and also that he never stayed at her home.”
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