A Fulton County Superior Court judge Wednesday dismissed six counts of a 41-count indictment charging former President Donald Trump and multiple co-defendants with interfering in Georgia’s 2020 president election.
Judge Scott McAfee declared the six charges legally defective – including a count charging Trump in the infamous January 2021 phone call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the 11,780 additional votes he needed to carry the Peach State over Democrat Joe Biden.
However, the nine-page ruling did not address a motion to disqualify Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis from the case because of an alleged conflict of interest stemming from a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to pursue the charges.
Two of the other five counts McAfee quashed charge Trump directly, including a count accusing him of asking then-Georgia House Speaker David Ralston to unlawfully appoint an alternate slate of presidential electors during a special session of the General Assembly.
Another count the judge dismissed charged then-Trump personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump campaign lawyer Ray Smith with soliciting members of the Georgia House of Representatives to unlawfully appoint “fake” electors.
Then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was charged along with Trump in the phone call to Raffensperger. Two counts list only “multiple defendants.”
In each instance, McAfee declared the counts defective because of a lack of detail.
“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,” the judge 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 dismissal of the three counts against Trump mean he still faces 88 criminal indictments in Georgia, Washington, D.C., Florida and New York.
McAfee has indicated he expects to rule on the motion to disqualify Willis by the end of this week.
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