Judge Scott McAfee on Wednesday dismissed six charges in the Georgia 2020 election interference case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against former President Donald Trump and several of his co-defendants.
The dismissal included three of the 13 charges against Trump, including allegations that he asked the Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives and the Georgia Secretary of State to break their oaths of office. Three of the 13 charges against Rudy Giuliani were also dropped, along with one of the nine counts against Trump lawyer John Eastman, one of the two counts against former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, three of the 12 counts against Georgia lawyer Ray Smith, and one of the ten counts against Georgia attorney Robert Cheeley.
“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.”
McAfee 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 specific enough 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.”
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The decision comes as McAfee weighs disqualifying Willis from the case over allegations that she engaged in an improper relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Willis is accused of being romantically involved with Wade at the time she hired him. Willis has claimed that the relationship began later. The two allegedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Wade for the Trump case to go on lavish vacations.
A witness last month testified that the romantic relationship between Willis and Wade began before the election interference case against Trump.