#scott mcafee

George Chidi at The Guardian:

The case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia ended on Wednesday with a filing for dismissal by the state prosecutor who took over after the removal of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney. Pete Skandalakis, the prosecutor and the executive director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, confirmed to the Guardian that “it’s over”after superior court judge Scott McAfee issued a one-page order on Wednesday dismissing the 2020 racketeering case. Skandalakis said he would be making no further comments about the matter. “The political persecution of President Trump by disqualified DA Fani Willis is finally over,” Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow wrote in a message posted to X. “This case should never have been brought. A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare.” On Wednesday afternoon, Trump posted on Truth Social about the dismissal, saying: “This case should have never been brought in the first place… We have to hold responsible those who attempted to destroy our Legal System and Nation itself as they tried to use it to silence and imprison Political Opponents for protecting our Country, and exercising our FIRST AMENDMENT Rights. The few remaining Democrat Witch Hunts will soon meet the same embarrassing end.”

In the long-winded post, Trump also lambasted Willis, Nathan Wade, Joe Biden and, as referenced above, the Democratic party.

A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Biden in Georgia. The dismissal means that Trump no longer faces prosecution after his call in which he asked the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn the US election results in Georgia.

Special counsel Jack Smith had charged Trump with federal crimes of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Smith dropped both cases after Trump won the White House last year, citing longstanding justice department policy against the indictment of a sitting president. Smith himself is now the target of a Hatch Act investigation by the office of special counsel at the Department of Justice. Trump’s conviction on felony charges in New York for making hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election resulted in an unconditional discharge by the court after his election, sparing him any punishment.

[...] The Georgia case remained the only criminal prosecution of Trump still standing, but Willis’s disqualification by the Georgia supreme court doomed the effort. The court ruled that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, revealed in dramatic court filings in January 2024, created an impermissible appearance of a conflict of interest.

This puts an official wrap into the investigations into Donald Trump, as the Georgia RICO Act indictments were the last case still active.

On Wednesday, newly-appointed prosecutor Pete Skandalakis dismissed the case, meaning that Trump and the others indicted sadly won’t face punishment for illegally attempting to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden in the Peachtree State.

See Also:

Trump is threatening the community, threatening a 'bloodbath' if he's not elected in November.

This is a clear violation of Trump's bond from his Georgia RICO case.

Please forward this to Judge Scott McAfee and District Attorney Fani Willis.

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George Chidi at The Guardian:

The only remaining criminal case against Donald Trump has been revived after the head of Georgia’s prosecutor’s council appointed himself to replace Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, who was removed from the election interference case in September. Pete Skandalakis, a Republican and the executive director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, the state body that provides legal training and is often charged to mitigate prosecutorial conflicts, wrote in a statement on Friday that he would be taking over from Willis. A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to find enough votes to beat Biden.

The case remains the only criminal prosecution of Trump, but it has been on life support after Willis was disqualified by the Georgia supreme court, which ruled that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, revealed in dramatic court filings in January 2024, created an impermissible appearance of a conflict of interest.

Four people have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. While president, Trump is protected from state-level prosecutions, but the other 14 remaining defendants are still subject to prosecution. “The filing of this appointment reflects my inability to secure another conflict prosecutor to assume responsibility for this case,” Skandalakis said. “Several prosecutors were contacted and, while all were respectful and professional, each declined the appointment.”

Fulton county’s courts have called on Skandalakis to resolve a conflict before in this case, after Scott McAfee, Fulton county superior court judge, found that Willis’s office had a conflict of interest with Burt Jones, who served as one of 16 “alternate” GOP electors in Georgia to cast a vote for Trump during the 2020 legal conflict over election results. Skandalakis ultimately declined to press charges in the case against Jones, who is now Georgia’s lieutenant governor and a candidate for governor in 2026.

McAfee set a 14 November deadline for Skandalakis to find a new prosecutor on the Trump racketeering indictment to avoid dismissing the case entirely.

“While it would have been simple to allow Judge McAfee’s deadline to lapse or to inform the court that no conflict prosecutor could be secured – thereby allowing the case to be dismissed for want of prosecution – I did not believe that to be the right course of action,” Skandalakis said. “The public has a legitimate interest in the outcome of this case. Accordingly, it is important that someone make an informed and transparent determination about how best to proceed.”

George Chidi at The Guardian:

The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has pledged to drive forward in her prosecution of Donald Trump, even as he once again ascends to the presidency. But the Georgia court of appeals may have other plans. The appeals court on Monday abruptly canceled oral arguments scheduled for 5 December in Georgia v Trump et al, the racketeering case alleging that Trump and more than a dozen of his allies conspired to steal the 2020 election. The court offered no explanation, and has not replied to a request for comment. Trump’s appeal of Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee’s order, which declined to disqualify Willis after bombshell revelations about a romantic relationship with her chosen special prosecutor, was to be argued before a three-judge panel. As part of their effort to dismiss the case, Trump and his co-defendants alleged Willis’s relationship meant she should be recused from the case.

Most cases before the appellate court are decided on pleadings, without oral argument. Nonetheless, the panel’s cancellation unleashed a wave of speculation about their intentions. “There’s a decent chance that the appeal gets dismissed as improvidently granted because the court wants Judge McAfee to address how the case will proceed now that Trump is president-elect,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor in Georgia and a close observer of the case. It is also possible that the appellate judges may have concluded that “defendants didn’t satisfy their evidentiary burden and so there’s no need for [the appeals court] to intervene”. Trump’s election has meant an end to federal prosecutions. Jack Smith announced that he would wind down the case involving Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and election interference shortly after the election. Federal prosecutors are now concerned that a vengeful White House will target them in retribution.

Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday asked the judge overseeing the hush-money criminal case for permission to make yet another play for dismissal, arguing that throwing out the case was necessary “in order to facilitate the orderly transition of Executive power”. The sentencing date of 26 November for his conviction is on hold. If the court sets the Manhattan conviction aside, Georgia is the last line of prosecution remaining against Trump. It is a state-level case, in a state that has no meaningful avenue for executive clemency. Willis reaffirmed her intent to pursue prosecutions on the case in comments last week, potentially waiting for Trump to come out on the other side of his four-year term. “If someone has an indictment in this office, no matter who they are, we continue to pursue those charges,” Willis, who was just re-elected to a second term, said at a media availability. “I’m here for eight more years, is my plan, so if that’s what it takes for us to get justice in some cases, we come to work every day, we’ll come in and look for justice.”

Hafiz Rashid at The New Republic:

The Georgia Court of Appeals has set a date to hear the Trump legal team’s appeal to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the Georgia election interference case. Oral arguments are set to begin in October—all but guaranteeing to delay the election racketeering trial until past the election and well into 2025. In mid-March, Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis could continue to prosecute the case, so long as she cut ties with her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, with whom she was accused of having an improper relationship. Two weeks later, Trump and eight of his 18 co-defendants in the case filed an application with the Georgia Court of Appeals asking it to reconsider McAfee’s decision, and last month, the court agreed to hear the case.

With Willis’s status on the fraud case pushed late in the year, the odds of the trial even beginning before the election in November have shrunk to zero. It’s a success for the convicted felon and Republican presidential candidate, whose legal strategy in the many cases against him has been to delay them so they can’t affect his chances of winning back the presidency.

Between this delay, Judge Aileen Cannon stalling Trump’s classified documents trial, and the Supreme Court’s examination of presidential immunity, Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges in his hush-money trial may be the only legal consequences he faces for a long time. Even though sentencing is set to be decided in July in that case, Trump still can appeal the conviction and push his sentence further down the road.

This is sure to push the Georgia v. Trump RICO ACT case past election day this year and likely into 2025.