Judge Scott McAfee is currently overseeing the racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia. Today, the judge dismissed six counts of indictment. According to Katelynn Richardson at The Daily Signal, the judge gave the following reasons for the dismissal. The six counts did not “give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, as the Defendants could have violated the Constitution and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways.”
“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. 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.”
“Under the standards articulated by our
appellate courts, the special demurrer must be granted, and Counts 2, 5, 6, 23,
28, and 38 squashed,” he wrote.
McAfee noted in a footnote that his order
does not “mean the entire indictment is dismissed.”
“The State may also seek an indictment
supplementing these six counts,” he wrote. He also denied defendants’ efforts
to dismiss certain overt acts contained in the indictment.
“The Court made the correct legal decision
to grant the special demurrers and squash important counts of the indictment
brought by DA Fani Willis,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead defense counsel, said in
a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Judge
McAfee is expected to soon decide the fate of Fulton County District Attorney
Fani Willis. Will she be disqualified from the case over an alleged conflict of
interest?
Trump co-defendant Michael Roman accused
Willis in a Jan. 8 motion of financially benefiting from appointing her lover
Nathan Wade to work as special prosecutor on the case.
Willis and Wade have denied the
relationship began before he was hired, though a close friend of Willis
testified it began in 2019 and Wade’s former law partner supplied details about
their relationship starting earlier to the attorney who filed the motion.
No comments:
Post a Comment