Judge dismisses 6 charges against Trump in Georgia election subversion case

The judge in the Georgia election subversion case dismissed six charges against former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants on Wednesday.

Initially charged with 13 counts over alleged efforts to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, this dismissal can be seen as a win of sorts for Trump, as it’s the first time charges have been dismissed in any of his four criminal indictments.

In the ruling, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee quashed charges that Trump and his co-defendants pressed public officials to break the law. “For example, one count against Mr. Trump said that he ‘unlawfully solicited, requested and importuned’ the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to violate his oath of office by decertifying the election,” according to The New York Times.

The former president and current 2024 presidential front-runner now faces only 10 felony charges in the Georgia case. The case, brought on by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, initially charged Trump and 18 other defendants with a combined 41 counts, including racketeering charges. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was passed by Congress in the 1970s to combat organized crime.

In the case involving Trump, Willis is using “a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse the former president, lawyers and other aides of a ‘criminal enterprise’ to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden,” per The Associated Press.

However, McAfee dismissed six of the charges related to RICO, saying they did not have enough evidence for the defense to gather a case against the accusations.

“The court’s concern is less that the state has failed to allege sufficient conduct of the defendants — in fact it has alleged an abundance. However, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned’s opinion, fatal,” McAfee wrote in the ruling, per CNN.

“As written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission, i.e., the underlying felony solicited,” said McAfee, CNN added. “They do not give the defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, as the defendants could have violated the Constitutions and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways.”

McAfee’s ruling comes just before he decides whether District Attorney Willis is eligible to remain on the case over an alleged relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired on the case.

Following McAfee’s ruling Wednesday, Trump’s attorney, Steve Sadow, said, “The ruling is a correct application of the law, as the prosecution failed to make specific allegations of any alleged wrongdoing on those counts. The entire prosecution of President Trump is political, constitutes election interference, and should be dismissed,” The Associated Press added.