Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appealed on Thursday a Georgia judge’s decision to dismiss six charges lodged at former P...
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appealed on Thursday a Georgia judge’s decision to dismiss six charges lodged at former President Donald Trump and his allies.
Willis asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to reverse Judge Scott McAfee’s decision to throw out the charges, including three against Trump, that were part of her 41-count election interference case against Trump and his co-defendants. In March, McAfee dismissed six of the charges saying that Willis had not been specific enough.
“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,” McAfee wrote. “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.”
The judge dismissed counts 2, 5, 6, 23, 28, and 38. Each count deals with allegations that Trump and his allies asked Georgia officials to break their oaths of office. The defendants challenged the charges, saying their Sixth Amendment rights and due process rights had been violated.
McAfee said that the prosecutors were not clear about the legal violations that Trump and his co-defendants are accused of.
“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,” he wrote. “However, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned’s opinion, fatal.”
The appeal comes after Willis easily won the Democratic primary election for district attorney on Tuesday night, taking 87% of the nearly 90,000 votes in the heavily Democratic county. Willis will now face Republican nominee and pro-Trump candidate Courtney Kramer in the November general election.
Willis has been heavily scrutinized over her prosecution of Trump, especially with the involvement of her former lover Nathan Wade on the case. The two were accused of using money paid to Wade for his work on the case to go on luxury vacations and trips.
McAfee ruled earlier this year that either Willis or Wade had to leave the case after Trump’s defense moved to have Willis disqualified.
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