ATLANTA (CN) — The Georgia Court of Appeals on Friday upheld the dismissal of six counts from the indictment against President-elect Donald Trump and five others in the state’s election interference case.
The three-judge panel sided with the lower court’s finding that the indictment fails to give the defendants enough detail about the charges to sufficiently prepare their defenses.
Judge E. Trenton Brown, who was appointed by former Republican Governor Nathan Deal, wrote in the unanimous opinion that the court’s decision stems from Georgia Supreme Court precedent.
In that 2022 case, Sanders v. State, Georgia’s high court ruled that a special demurrer should have been granted because an indictment failed to include any facts to support a charge of soliciting another to commit a felony offense.
“After noting that the indictment alleged that the defendant requested another to possess an unspecified amount of an unspecified drug, the Supreme Court concluded that the indictment as written did not give the defendant enough information about the solicitation charge to prepare her defense intelligently as the defendant could have violated the statute in a number of possible ways,” Brown wrote.
Brown was joined by appellate judges Todd Markle and Ben Land.
In March, the judge overseeing the election interference case quashed six counts lodged against Trump, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, lawyer John Eastman, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and attorneys Ray Smith and Bob Cheeley.
The six challenged counts charged the defendants with “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer,” a felony punishable
“by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than three years.” But Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found that the indictment failed to cite what oaths each of the solicited public officers was required to take.
The state had urged the court to reinstate the struck counts, arguing that the solicited felony doesn’t need to be detailed because the crime does not require that a defendant fully realize the plan or scheme of the solicited conduct.
Among the struck counts were those that claimed multiple defendants solicited elected members of the Georgia Senate and House of Representatives to violate their oaths of office in December 2020 by requesting or importuning them to unlawfully appoint presidential electors.
One of the counts against Trump — for soliciting the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives to violate his oath of office by urging him to call a special session to unlawfully appoint presidential electors — was also dropped.
McAfee also dismissed the count against Trump and Meadows that accused them of pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “to unlawfully decertify the election.”
The charge stemmed from a leaked phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, during which Raffensperger was urged to “find” enough votes needed to overturn Trump’s election defeat to President Joe Biden. That became a crucial element of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ probe of illegal election interference.
Despite Friday’s ruling, the fate of the case itself remains in limbo. In an order last month, the same appeals court panel ordered for Willis and her team to be removed from the prosecution due to an “appearance of impropriety.” Judge Land strongly dissented.
This means that the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia will have to assign the case to a new prosecutor. However, due to the politically sensitive nature of the charges, one may be reluctant to take on the high-profile case. If the assigned district attorney was elected by conservative voters outside of metro Atlanta, they may simply choose to drop the charges on the remaining 14 defendants rather than risk backlash from constituents and the vocal ire of a sitting president.
Last week, Willis turned to the Georgia Supreme Court, asking the justices to make the last call on whether the president-elect’s charges should be handed to a new prosecutor.
Regardless of whether or not a new prosecution team takes on the case, it remains unclear whether Trump will have his day in court as he prepares to return to the White House on Monday.
Since his reelection, the two federal criminal cases against him — the election subversion case in Washington and the classified documents case in Florida — have been ended.
Trump was able to avoid tangible punishment from his conviction of 34 counts of falsifying business records, although the sentencing cemented his status as a felon in New York City just 10 days before his inauguration.
In the Georgia case, Trump is charged with racketeering and a dozen other felonies, including solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree and false statements and writings.
He and 18 of his associates were indicted in August 2023 for refusing to accept that Trump lost the 2020 election, as well as for knowingly and willfully joining a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in his favor.