Triumph for Trump in Georgia as Fani Willis’s Criminal Election Interference Prosecution of the President Is ‘Finally Over’

The dismissal of all charges in Georgia against President Trump and 18 others for election interference is a landmark legal victory for the 47th president — and a final defeat for the distinct attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis. Three criminal cases against Mr. Trump have now ended in failure for prosecutors.Mr. Trump’s attorney, Steven Sadow, tells the Sun in an emailed statement: “The political persecution of President Trump by disqualified DA Fani Willis is finally over. This case should never have been brought. A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare.” The case is now also over for two members of Mr. Trump’s camarilla — Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the former presidential chief of staff, Mark Meadows. The death knell of dismissal came from the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, Pete Skandalakis, who assumed control of the case after Ms. Willis was disqualified by the Georgia court of appeals for the “appearance of impropriety” caused by her secret romance with her handpicked special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. Judge McAfee granted Mr. Skandalakis’s motion to dismiss the case in its entirety. Mr. Skandalakis, in a memorandum describing his decision to abandon the sprawling racketeering case charged by Ms. Willis, writes that the “strongest and most prosecutable case against those seeking to overturn the 2020 Presidential election results and prevent the certification of those votes was the one investigated and indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith.” Mr. Smith’s case ended when Mr. Trump was re-elected as president. Mr. Skandalis writes that “unlike family members who must make the emotional decision to withdraw loved ones from life-sustaining treatment, I have no emotional connection to this case … this decision is not guided by a desire to advance an agenda but is based on my beliefs and understanding of the law.” He cites as an inspiration Justice Robert Jackson, who served as America’s attorney general and delivered a landmark speech on prosecutors. Mr. Skandalakis, a Republican, spent 25 years as the elected district attorney for the Coweta Judicial Circuit, southwest of Atlanta. Earlier this month he wrote to Judge McAfee that he had attempted to find another prosecutor to helm the case, without success. Hours before the case was set to expire, he took on the task himself — and decided the troubled prosecution was not worth pursuing.The case, Mr. Skandalakis wrote to Judge McAfee, “is on life support and the decision on what to do with it falls on me and me alone.” The prosecutor reasoned that if Mr. Smith “with all the resources of the federal government at his disposal, after reviewing the evidence in this case … concluded that prosecution would be fruitless … then I too find that, despite the available evidence, pursuing the prosecution on essentially federal grounds would be equally unproductive.”Mr. Skandalais also wrote that “it is not illegal to question or challenge election results” and that bringing this case before a jury “in 2029, 2030 or even 2031 would be nothing short of a remarkable feat.” The Department of Justice has held that sitting presidents enjoy “categorical” immunity from criminal prosecution — that stance was what ultimately caused Mr. Smith to throw in the towel after the 2024 election. While there has never been a state prosecution of a sitting president — and the DOJ’s edict only applies to federal cases — Mr. Skandalakis reasons that the same logic would apply to Georgia’s effort to prosecute. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States that official presidential acts are presumptively immune from prosecution — and that some acts possess “absolute” immunity — applies to state and federal cases alike.Mr. Skandalais writes: “There is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial on the allegations in this indictment.” He also delivers the remarkable observation that “the criminal conduct alleged in the Atlanta Judicial Circuit’s prosecution was conceived in Washington, D.C., not the State of Georgia. The federal government is the appropriate venue for this prosecution, not the State of Georgia.”Ms. Willis’s case was upended by the disclosures that she was romantically involved with Mr. Wade, to whom her office — and Fulton County taxpayers — paid some $700,000 despite him never having prosecuted a felony. The two took vacations together while he was on the job, including to destinations like Napa Valley, Belize, and Aruba. The pair denied under oath that they began dating before he was hired.The case’s defendants, though, adduced telephone data that appeared to show the two exchanging thousands of text messages and phone calls before Mr. Wade joined Ms. Willis’s team. Judge McAfee ruled that their behavior “emitted an odor of mendacity” and was “legally improper” but determined that Mr. Wade’s departure was sufficient to remedy the impropriety that had come to pervade the case. The Georgia court of appeals, though, found this to be “the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.” Yet the appellate court declined to dismiss the charges entirely. Ms. Willis’s disqualification was confirmed when the Georgia supreme court refused to hear her appeal. She won re-election in November, though, with some 70 percent of the vote.

Triumph for Trump in Georgia as Fani Willis’s Criminal Election Interference Prosecution of the President Is ‘Finally Over’

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