(Congress Report) – A judge in Fulton County, Georgia has tossed out six counts in the election inference case against former President Donald Trump and his list of 18 co-defendants. If you pause briefly, you can hear the sound of liberal heads exploding all over our country. Judge Scott McAfee issued an order on Wednesday saying the state of Georgia failed to allege enough detail for the six counts of “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer.”
“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 opinion, fatal,” McAfee wrote, according to Fox News.
“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,” the judge 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 noted.
State law in Georgia prevents any public officer from both willfully and intentionally violating the terms of the oath as prescribed by law. District Attorney Fani Willis went on to allege that Trump and at least six of his co-defendants illegally tried to convince numerous state officials to take action that would be in violation of their oaths in order to overturn the election results of the 2020 presidential race.
“The indictment refers to alleged requests made to members of the Georgia legislature to unlawfully appoint alternative presidential electors and alleged efforts by Trump and his then-chief of staff Mark Meadows to solicit Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to decertify the election. Multiple defendants challenged the counts on grounds that Willis did not detail the exact terms of the oaths that were alleged to have been violated,” Fox News stated.
McAfee went on to say that the indictment should have alleged an underlying felony solicited by the defendants.
“In other words, a naked charge of solicitation cannot survive unless accompanied by additional elements establishing the solicited felony,” the judge said in his ruling.
“The Court made the correct legal decision to grant the special demurrers and quash important counts of the indictment brought by DA Fani Willis,” Trump attorney Steve Sadow declared. “The counts dismissed against President Trump are 5, 28 and 38, which falsely claimed that he solicited GA public officials to violate their oath of office.”
“The ruling is a correct application of the law, as the prosecution failed to make specific allegations of any alleged wrongdoing on those counts,” Sadow continued in his comments. “The entire prosecution of President Trump is political, constitutes election interference, and should be dismissed.”
McAfee is not only handling the election interference case, but is also presiding over allegations against Willis by a group of co-defendants that claim the district attorney hired her lover, Nathan Wade, as a special prosecutor and then promptly benefited financially from doing so.
“The bombshell allegations led to a blockbuster evidentiary hearing last month in which Willis and Wade denied the allegations they were in a relationship when he was hired and that Willis never benefited from Wade’s position because she would reimburse him with cash for all the vacations they took together,” Fox News divulged.
“McAfee is considering the evidence presented in the hearing and is expected to make a decision whether Willis and her team should be disqualified from the case in the next two weeks,” it added.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley explained why McAfee’s decision to squash the six counts delivered a massive blow to Fani Willis and her case.
“Judge McAfee dismissal of the six counts presents a difficult question for the prosecution. If they try to secure a superseding indictment to correct the earlier mistakes, it will make it difficult to try the case before the election… The defense is allowed discovery and time to prepare for the new alleged crimes. That will take time off the clock. The court has indicated that they can still rely on the underlying conduct to make out the general racketeering charge. However, that theory was already thin soup and it just got a bit thinner,” Turley went on to say.
Judge McAfee dismissal of the six counts presents a difficult question for the prosecution. If they try to secure a superseding indictment to correct the earlier mistakes, it will make it difficult to try the case before the election…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 13, 2024
Turley added, “Part of the value of the multiplicity of counts was to convey a pattern criminality as a foundation for the more serious racketeering charges. This does not disable the case, but it adds yet another set back for the prosecution as it awaits the disqualification decision.”
…The defense is allowed discovery and time to prepare for the new alleged crimes. That will take time off the clock. The court has indicated that they can still rely on the underlying conduct to make out the general racketeering charge. However, that theory was alreadly thin…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 13, 2024
…Part of the value of the multiplicity of counts was to convey a pattern criminality as a foundation for the more serious racketeering charges. This does not disable the case, but it adds yet another set back for the prosecution as it awaits the disqualification decision.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 13, 2024
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