Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Judge Tosses Two Counts Against Trump In Fani Willis’ Indictment

(Screen Capture/CSPAN)

A judge tossed two counts against former President Donald Trump Thursday in the case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

While Judge Scott McAfee declined to toss the whole indictment under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, he found that some charges did “lie beyond this State’s jurisdiction,” including the two counts against Trump and another against co-defendants. Willis indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023 for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election in Georgia.

“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again,” Steve Sadow, lead counsel for Trump in the Fulton County case, said in a statement. “The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed.”

McAfee tossed counts 14, 15, and 27 of the indictment, which contained allegations related to filing false documents in federal court.

As a whole, McAfee found the indictment is “within the scope of state authority under the appointment powers granted in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution and the police powers reserved by the states in the 10th Amendment.”

“Nor is the subject of the indictment so inseparably connected to the functioning of the national government that it is barred entirely by the Supremacy Clause,” McAfee wrote. “However, because Counts 14, 15, and 27 lie beyond this State’s jurisdiction and must be quashed, the Defendants’ motions to dismiss the indictment under the Supremacy Clause are granted in part.”

McAfee tossed six other counts in March, including three against Trump.

In June, the case against Trump was put on hold while the Georgia Court of Appeals weighed defendants’ bid to disqualify Willis. McAfee allowed Willis to remain on the case in March, though he found “a significant appearance of impropriety” in her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom defendants alleged she financially benefited from appointing.

Willis awarded Wade a contract that paid $250 an hour at the same time the state’s top racketeering expert was making $200 an hour, though she claimed she paid all three special prosecutors the same rate, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.