This Georgia bill could allow GOPers to 'remove' elected district attorney investigating Trump: report

07 March 2023

As former President Donald Trump pursues the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, he continues to face a variety of federal and state investigations — some criminal and some civil. Simultaneously, Trump is being probed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis.

Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks has, more than once, pointed out that even President Richard Nixon during the 1970s didn't have as much legal baggage as Trump.

Smith and James' Trump-related investigations intersect in some areas. Both of them are probing Trump's post-election activities of late 2020 and early 2021, but Smith is doing so at the federal level while Willis is doing so at the state level. And Smith's investigation is broader; Willis is zeroing in on Trump's efforts to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia.

In an article published by Above the Law on March 6, Baltimore-based reporter Liz Dye emphasizes that Georgia is among the states where Republicans are "proposing bills to impose statewide oversight on local prosecutors and even remove them from office if they fall out of favor with the ruling party." Their vehicle in the Peach State is Georgia Senate Bill 92, and Dye finds the bill's timing suspicious in light of DA Willis' Trump-related investigation.

Dye observes, "SB 92, which passed the Georgia Senate 32-24 on Thursday, (March 2), would create a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission composed of gubernatorial and legislative appointees empowered to 'discipline, remove, and cause involuntary retirement of appointed or elected district attorneys or solicitors-general' for 'mental or physical incapacity,' 'willful misconduct in office,' or 'willful and persistent failure to carry out duties'…. There's no way to talk about this (bill) without considering District Attorney Fani Willis' ongoing investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to steal the state’s 16 electoral votes from Joe Biden — particularly since multiple Republican state legislators found themselves summoned before the special purpose grand jury as either witnesses or targets of the investigation thanks to their role in the fraudulent electors scheme."

Dye adds, 'In fact, under SB 92, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who has been told he is a target of Willis' investigation, would be empowered to appoint one member of the prosecutors oversight body."

The Baltimore-based reporter fears that Georgia SB 92 will "be wielded for political advantage" by pro-Trump Republicans.

"For instance," Dye points out, "it empowers the board to entertain a complaint based on a 'plausible' allegation that a prosecutorial decision was based on 'undue bias or prejudice against the accused' or 'factors that are completely unrelated to the duties of prosecution.' Let’s take a wild shot in the dark that these legislators do not have in mind an evangelical DA who has expressed the opinion that abortion is murder in the eyes of God."

Read Above the Law’s full article at this link.

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