Trump wins rare court victory as Georgia

Trump wins rare court victory as Georgia judge dismisses 3 criminal counts against him
Story by jshamsian@businessinsider.com (Jacob Shamsian)
03/13/24

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's Georgia criminal case dismissed three counts against him.
He dropped six of the 41 counts in the indictment overall.
It's a rare piece of good news for Trump, but prosecutors have another shot at beefing up the indictment.
Former President Donald Trump got a rare bit of good news on Wednesday as the judge overseeing his criminal case in Georgia dismissed three of the counts against him.

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Trump can't take a victory lap just yet, however. Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee said in his ruling that prosecutors could still bring the criminal counts again — but they needed to provide additional detail about Trump's efforts to pressure Georgia officials to overturn the 2020 election results.
And the judge did not dismiss the vast majority of the counts in the indictment, dismissing six out of 41 counts overall. So far, 10 criminal counts against Trump remain. He can still issue future rulings on some of the remaining counts, on other legal grounds.

Fulton County Attorney Fani Willis brought the indictment against Trump and more than a dozen of his allies in August, claiming they illegally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

Several of Trump's co-defendants have already pleaded guilty to the charges against them

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The plot included attempts to pressure Georgia officials not to ratify now-President Joe Biden's victory in the state, and to appoint fake electors who would go to Congress and falsely claim Trump won the state's electoral votes. Trump himself pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes that would flip the election results in his favor.

McAfee's ruling Wednesday dismisses six counts overall, all regarding "Solicitation of Violation of Oath by Public Officer." He wrote that prosecutors didn't sufficiently explain how public officials would have violated their oaths of office if they allowed Trump a victory.

"On its own, the United States Constitution contains hundreds of clauses, any one of which can be the subject of a lifetime's study. Academics and litigators devote their entire careers to the specialization of a single amendment," McAfee wrote.

Prosecutors needed more detail, McAfee ruled.

"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."

McAfee's ruling on the six counts comes as he is also weighing whether to disqualify Willis from prosecuting the indictment over claims she had an "improper relationship" with the special prosecutor, an Atlanta attorney she hired to lead the case.

Wednesday's ruling is welcome news for Trump, who has otherwise had a tough time with his many legal cases.

Last week, he finally obtained a $92 million bond to stave off E. Jean Carroll from collecting her defamation judgment against him as he pursues appeals.

Trump is still racing to get the cash for an estimated $500 million bond for the New York Attorney General's court victory against him in a civil fraud case against the Trump Organization.

And in less than two weeks, Trump is expected to be in court again for the start of his first criminal trial, for the Manhattan district attorney's "hush money" case against him.

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