Georgia judge dismisses three charges against Trump for his attempted electoral coup |

“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have [por necesitamos]”. Then-President Donald Trump’s famous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, which appeared to attempt election rigging, led to an indictment against Trump for asking a public official to violate his oath of office. Scott McAfee, the Georgia judge handling the case, however, has surprisingly dismissed this Wednesday that accusation against Trump and two others for the same crime, plus three against other defendants. It is the first time in the four indictments that charges against the former president have been dismissed, in what represents a victory for him and a setback for the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, in charge of the case, but which the defense wants to remove for his romantic relationship with one of his subordinates.

McAfee maintains the bulk of the accusation against Trump, since 10 of the 13 charges initially presented are still alive. Among other things, the prosecutor has resorted to laws designed to combat the mafia to accuse the former president of leading a criminal organization to make an electoral bid in Georgia after his defeat against Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential elections.

The call does not disappear and can serve as an element of evidence in other accusations, but the judge considers that the accusation of requesting a public official to violate his oath is not specific enough to gather the elements of the type of crime. McAfee leaves the door open for the prosecutor to refile the accusation for the now dismissed charges.

The nine-page order issued by McCafee files the six accusations focused on that type of crime. In Trump’s case, one is for the call to Raffensperger on January 2, 2021 to find more votes. Another, for asking the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives to violate his oath by asking him to call a special session to illegally appoint presidential electors. The third, for also asking Raffensperger to violate his oath, already in September 2021, requesting or importuning him to illegally annul his certification of the election results.

The other three dismissed charges are similar in nature, but do not involve Trump. The decision benefits, among others, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; to Trump’s lawyer and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and to a Trump Administration Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark.

Lack of concreteness

The prosecutor had alleged that the actions of the accused implied requesting the violation of the oath to comply with the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Georgia, but the judge considers that this “is so generic” that it forces him to attend to the appeal of the defendants to dismiss the charges. “The United States Constitution alone contains hundreds of clauses, any one of which can be the subject of a lifetime of study. Academics and litigators dedicate their entire careers to the specialization of a single amendment,” she illustrates.

“The lack of detail on an essential legal element is, in the opinion of the undersigned, fatal. “These six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes, but do not allege in sufficient detail the nature of their commission,” Judge McAfee maintains. “They do not give defendants enough information to intelligently prepare their defenses, since defendants could have violated the Constitution and, therefore, the criminal law in dozens, if not hundreds, of different ways,” he adds.

McAfee leaves three options to the Prosecutor’s Office. He can drop those charges, appeal to a higher court or try to resubmit them before a grand jury with greater precision, as he indicates in a footnote to the brief.

The ruling is a blow to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. It comes as Judge McAfee is considering excluding her from the case over what defense attorneys have alleged is a conflict of interest due to her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Willis, who has said her relationship ended months ago, maintains there is no conflict of interest and no reason to remove her from the case. The evolution of the case may depend on the decision made by the judge.

Trump has an appointment to sit in the dock on March 25 in New York. However, the president’s lawyers have requested at the last minute (and outside the deadline) that the case be suspended until the Supreme Court decides on immunity for the acts of a president in the exercise of his office. In the case of New York, Trump is accused of commercial falsehoods in payments to hide scandals in the 2016 presidential campaign (one of them to porn actress Stormy Daniels, to silence an alleged extramarital affair). Although they occurred before Trump was president, the defense alleges that messages and statements from when he was in the White House are being used as evidence.

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