From 4h ago
Judge blocks Georgia DA from investigating Trump 'fake elector'
The criminal inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden in Georgia has hit a speed bump.
In what the
Atlanta Journal Constitution calls “a surprise decision and a significant rebuke” of Fulton county district attorney
Fani Willis, superior court judge
Robert McBurney said Monday she cannot pursue her investigation of state senator
Burt Jones.
Fani Willis. Photograph: John Bazemore/AP
Jones was one of the 16
secretive “fake electors” who were lined up to fraudulently certify a Trump victory in the state he lost to Biden in 2020 by almost 12,000 votes.
McBurney granted a motion by Jones, a Republican running for Georgia lieutenant governor, to remove Willis and her team from looking into his role in the scandal, citing the fact Willis hosted a campaign fundraiser last month for Jones’s now opponent, Democrat
Charlie Bailey.
McBurney wrote:
An investigation of this significance, garnering the public attention it necessarily does and touching so many political nerves in our society, cannot be burdened by legitimate doubts about the district attorney’s motives.
The district attorney does not have to be apolitical, but her investigations do.
As a consequence, an alternative prosecutor must now decide whether to continue treating Jones as “a target” of the investigation, as Willis
designated the 16 “fake electors” last week, and whether to charge him with criminal misdeeds.
The Georgia inquiry is widely seen as one of the best chances of holding Trump liable for his “big lie” that the election was stolen from him, and efforts to alter the result, which included the
deadly 6 January Capitol insurrection.
Earlier this month, the
Georgia prosecutors issued subpoenas for several members of Trump’s legal team, including South Carolina’s Republican senator
Lindsey Graham and former New York city mayor
Rudy Giuliani to testify.
On Monday, CNN reported, Georgia governor
Brian Kemp, who has clashed frequently with Trump over the state’s certification of Biden’s victory, gave recorded testimony to a grand jury assisting the investigation.
The inquiry has focused in part on an
infamous phone call Trump made to Georgia secretary of state
Brad Raffensperger after the 2020 election urging him to “find” the number of votes the outgoing president needed to win the state.
Actually not nearly as bad as i was anticipating. I'm fairly sure she could find another prosecutor willing to investigate him, and it keeps the weasel from slipping free later, as the noose tightens.
That would be an easy case to make too.
