Georgia’s U.S. senators say they are are outraged at the prospect of large job losses for clean energy workers if the Republican Congress implements its proposed cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act.

Georgia Democratic U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are opposing Republican members of Congress backing the Trump administration’s budget spending plans that could lead to the repeal of federal manufacturing incentives fueling Georgia’s clean energy projects, including solar energy projects and the state’s growing battery storage and electrified vehicle industries.

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has championed the state’s emergence as a leader in electric vehicle production, vowing to make the state the country’s EV capital.

Ossoff and Warnock are joined by a number of clean energy groups that claim Congressional cuts to the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act could result in the loss of 42,000 jobs in Georgia. Investing in more than 50 clean energy projects worth more than $28 billion has made the state a national leader in clean energy.

In 2022, Congress passed the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act tax credits that supported hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide in funding and loans to various industries such as solar and electric vehicle manufacturing.

Georgia’s clean energy economy has led the nation since former President Joe Biden signed the IRA in 2022.

On Tuesday, Warnock released an analysis of the “clean energy boom in Georgia.”

The progressive nonprofit Climate Power released a report this year detailing Georgia’s $31 billion in clean energy investments, only behind New York’s $115 billion job-creating projects.

On April 30, Ossoff and Climate Power said a loss of federal support for clean energy projects will inflict economic pain in Georgia.

“If Republicans repeal these manufacturing incentives, it could be catastrophic for Georgia’s economic development,” Ossoff said. “The manufacturing incentives that we passed into law have driven more private investment into new industrial plants in Georgia than just about any other state in the country.”

Congressional Republicans adopted a budget spending plan in April that lacks $1.5 trillion in savings to offset the new spending.

The budget slashes $21 billion from funding for renewable energy, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and other efforts to reduce climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions. The request also targets climate research spending and initiatives meant to promote diversity.

Four Senate Republicans and 21 House Republicans have urged their leadership to preserve the clean energy tax credit.

The president’s budget request is a wish list for Congress, which controls federal spending, to consider. Even with both chambers of Congress controlled by Republicans sympathetic to Trump’s policies, it is just a starting point for negotiations between the administration and Congress.

The Warnock report found that during the last three years of the Inflation Reduction Act, nearly all new investments and jobs in Georgia are outside of the Atlanta region.

The majority of new jobs and investments are in counties with lower bachelor’s degree rates, according to Warnock.

Trump began his presidency by pausing grants and distributions in Biden’s energy legislation, including investments intended to expand renewable energy and clean energy manufacturing. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun the process to reverse federal greenhouse pollution limits for cars.

Warnock says Trump’s taking aim at the electric vehicle industry by pushing for a repeal of a $7,500 tax credit on electric vehicles is counterproductive.

“In a political era defined by gridlock, everyone can agree that we should protect investments that are spurring good-paying manufacturing jobs,” Warnock said.

“There is bipartisan support for protecting the clean energy investments which support Georgia jobs, Georgia manufacturing, and Georgia innovation,” Warnock said. “These investments are bringing real change to communities and families across the state, but those good-paying clean energy jobs are under threat.

Pooler Republican U.S. Congressman Buddy Carter has steadfastly promoted Trump’s environmental regulations rollbacks of the Biden administration’s clean energy policies. Carter’s coastal Georgia district is home to Hyundai’s $7.6 billion EV plant near Savannah.

Georgia is leading the nation in new clean energy jobs and private investment, including a projected 43,000 new jobs created since August 2022, according to a Jan. 16 report from environmental watchdog Climate Power.

Georgia is a major reason why the Southeast is the national leader for EV and battery-related jobs and private sector investments, according to a 2024 report from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Georgia earned the group’s top spots in the region for its projected 27,394 new jobs and investments exceeding $24 billion.

Gov. Brian Kemp steps out of a Rivian truck at December 2021 press event announcing the the electric vehicle maker will build a factory in Georgia. Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder (file photo)

Tax incentives offered by the state with the strong backing of Kemp were used to secure commitments from Hyundai and Rivian to build electric powered vehicles at massive new plants projected to employ thousands of people

Stan Cross, electric transportation director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said that current political instability could undermine progress made by state leaders who promoted investments in workforce new electric vehicle manufacturing sites like Hyundai.

Cross said it’s tough to predict what Congress will or won’t do to support electric vehicles in Georgia. But there’s no doubt a transition to EVs will certainly reduce tailpipe emissions, which significantly impacts air pollution, Cross said.

“Georgia is No. 1 in the private sector for EV and battery manufacturing investments and jobs, making Georgia number one in having the most to lose if the financial incentive rug gets pulled out from under the state,” Cross said.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

The chairman of a special Senate committee set up to probe the Fulton County prosecution of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss has turned his attention to former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, whose ties to a voter registration nonprofit recently resulted in one of the largest campaign ethics fines levied by the state.

Athens Republican Sen. Bill Cowsert on Friday filed Senate Resolution 292, which would allow the Senate Special Committee on Investigations to open a probe into Abrams’ founded New Georgia Project following a Jan. 15 settlement in the long-running campaign ethics case. Last month, the group and affiliated New Georgia Project Action Fund signed an settlement agreement in a 2019 case alleging illegal campaign contributions to Abrams’ 2018 gubernatorial campaign and other Democrats running for statewide office that year.

The New Georgia Project agreed to pay a $300,000 fine as part of a state ethics commission settlement agreement for committing 16 campaign finance violations, including failing to register as an independent committee and not disclosing about $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in expenditures.

The Senate resolution says the special committee will examine whether current state laws on campaign finance and nonprofits fail to address the “legal and fiscal issues raised by the alleged and admitted conduct of multiple organizations with connections to Stacey Abrams.”

Abrams created the New Georgia Project to focus on registering more Black and other non-white Georgians to vote, earning her national recognition for her work for growing the state’s electorate and boosting engagement among disaffected voters. She has not been affiliated with New Georgia Project since shortly before her 2018 campaign, when she narrowly lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Abrams lost by a wider margin in a 2022 rematch with Kemp.

The Senate resolution would also allow the committee to investigate a $2 billion grant awarded in 2024 to an environmental organization “with ties to Abrams.”

In a PolitiFact post published Wednesday, the Poynter Institute disputed allegations on social media that Abrams committed fraud during the awarding of the Environmental Protection Agency grant allocated for energy-efficient housing across the country.

The clean grant was awarded to Power Forward Communities, a coalition of groups like United Way, Habitat for Humanity International and Rewiring America, a national electrification nonprofit that Abrams served as senior counsel for from March 2023 until the end of 2024.

An executive of Power Forward told Politico that Abrams never received any payments related to the grant.

Abrams is the second prominent Georgia Democratic Black woman targeted since the special committee was established last year to investigate alleged misconduct by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. In January, the Senate voted along party lines to reinstate the committee’s investigation into Willis’ handling of the 2020 election interference case against Trump.

Senate Minority Leader Democrat Harold Jones said Friday that he is concerned that SR 292 is another example of GOP Senate leadership wading into legal matters that have been handled in more appropriate venues.

“The thing that stands out is that neither one is within our purview,” Jones said. “There’s no real authority to do this, quite frankly, and it’s really a first that has been done. The president actually said people ought to stop actually engaging in this type of behavior. And yet, here we are, with their party still engaging in behavior that is trying to use a quasi-court system to gain a political advantage.”

Willis is requesting that the Georgia Supreme Court consider her challenge after the state’s appellate court disqualified her from prosecuting the Trump case because of misconduct related to a previously undisclosed romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to lead the case.

Willis also continues to wage court battles seeking to block Senate committee subpoenas requesting her to testify and turn over a trove of documents.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

Georgia Senate Republicans voted Monday to reinstate the Special Committee on Investigations, which spent last year investigating the alleged misconduct of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Georgia state senators voted along party lines Monday to continue investigating Willis regarding her handling of the 2020 election interference case against Republican President-elect Donald Trump and a number of his allies. Republican and Democratic senators continued to argue Monday on whether to reopen an investigation designed by the GOP to hold the Fulton County top prosecutor accountable or to continue a probe that Democrats label as a political stunt.

Sen. Greg Dolezal sponsored the resolution reauthorizing a special committee tasked with not establishing similar standards for prosecutors across the state and holding prosecutors deemed as rogue accountable.

The Cumming Republican said he anticipates the new committee will reissue a subpoena demanding Willis’ testimony once the case is resolved in court. Last month, a Fulton County Superior Court judge ordered Willis to respond this week to the committee’s subpoena requesting a trove of documents and her testimony.

Cumming Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal speaks to the media Monday about sponsoring a resolution to reinstate a Senate Special Committee on Investigations probing alleged misconduct of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Georgia Recorder/Stanley Dunlap

“Before (Willis) was fighting our subpoena, she was breaking open records laws,” Dolezal said Monday. “Before she was breaking open records laws, she was visiting the White House.”

Dolezal said the committee is designed to restore confidence in Georgia’s criminal justice system instead of just targeting a lone district attorney.

“The other interesting thing is that when you read the court’s ruling, it speaks to the reality that she had to be removed from the case to restore faith in the justice system in the state,” he said. “I would think that’s a bipartisan issue that Democrats and Republicans would have equal interest in restoring confidence in the criminal justice.”

Willis is appealing to the Georgia Supreme Court a December ruling from the Georgia Court of Appeals that disqualified Willis and her office from the case. The case is left limping along and at risk of losing Trump as its top target. Trump’s attorneys continue to argue that an incoming president cannot be prosecuted for performing official role in office.

Trump is scheduled to be sworn in on Monday for the start of his second term in the White House after losing his re-election bid in 2020 to Democratic President Joe Biden. Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted in August 2023 on conspiracy charges for allegedly trying to illegally overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. Four of the people charged took a negotiated plea deal.

Sen. Josh McLaurin, an attorney and Sandy Springs Democrat, acknowledged some missteps by the prosecution, but said a Senate committee shouldn’t investigate the actions of one district attorney in order to change state law. Republicans introduced the resolution on Monday, the first day of the 2025 legislative session.

“This is a fixation on the past,” McLaurin said. “But worse than that is a fixation on the past that is driven primarily by the obsessions of one man who is going to be president in one week. We have now spent years in this chamber, catering to, bending to and accommodating the narcissistic preferences of one man.”

Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones said Democratic lawmakers might decide not to participate in a panel he characterized as a waste of time. Jones, a Democrat from Augusta, served last year on the investigative committee, which dissolved at the start of 2025.

Jones said the panel spent too much time focused on the Fulton County prosecution of Trump and procurement issues. Rather than focusing on relevant issues, such as health care and child care, Jones said his Republican counterparts are spending more time discussing a topic that shouldn’t be the concern of state government.

Fulton County voters voted overwhelmingly in November to return Willis to lead the District Attorney’s office.

Senators still need to decide which nine lawmakers will serve on the new bipartisan committee.

“Quite frankly, there’s nothing else that committee is going to learn,” Jones said. It’s going to be a complete waste of time again. As I said, during my 10 years that I’ve been here, I’ve never sat in a committee saying that I’ve said has wasted my time.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

A Fulton County judge is expected to rule in the coming weeks on whether a special state Senate investigations committee has the authority to compel Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to testify.

A debate over the subpoena powers of a Georgia legislative committee played out Tuesday during a three hour hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram.

In September, Willis refused to appear before the Senate Special Committee on Investigations that is conducting an inquiry into her alleged misconduct. Instead, her attorney asked a judge to block the subpoena pending a ruling whether state lawmakers can force her to appear before their committee.

The bipartisan committee was formed by GOP Senate leadership in connection with Willis taking on the investigation that led to racketeering charges against former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and several other swing states.

Republican state lawmakers trained their sights on Willis after a February court hearing made public that Willis had been in a romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, the attorney she hired to lead the probe.

Willis attorney and ex-Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes argued Tuesday that under Georgia law, both the House and Senate must agree by joint resolution or by statute that ethics committees have subpoena powers.

“They did that by statute, the General Assembly knows how to grant subpoena power committees, as it’s done so in the past, and the General Assembly and the framers of the Georgia constitution know how to distinguish between the General Assembly as a whole and an individual chamber such as the House and the Senate,” he said.

Barnes said there are good reasons why one chamber doesn’t have authority to unilaterally issue subpoenas against another public official or governing body. Furthermore, he argued Tuesday that the committee was seeking an overly broad amount of documentation and was intending to ask intrusive questions that exceeded its scope of authority.

“What if the Senate decided they were going to form a committee to investigate the House,” Barnes said. “Call the speaker, let’s subpoena him. Why are you not calling Senate bills up? That is ridiculous. And it’s the reason that the power has been kept from individual houses, and has to be devised by statute.”

The Fulton County election interference case against Trump took another detour last month after a Georgia Court of Appeals canceled a hearing set for Thursday to consider a petition from Trump and co-defendants who want to disqualify Willis due to her prior romantic relationship with Wade. The future of the case was placed in doubt after Trump won the Nov. 5 presidential election over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

The special investigative committee will formally dissolve before the new legislative session begins in January. Its chairman, Sen. Bill Cowsert, a Republican from Athens, has suggested changes that would add new safeguards to what is now left to the discretion of state prosecutors when they appoint a special counsel.

Senate committee attorney Josh Belinfante said Tuesday that the Supreme Court of Georgia gives the Georgia Legislature broad powers to have its committees issue subpoenas. The committee is tasked with determining if there should be budgetary limitations on the hiring of special assistant district attorneys, he said.

“They’re not taking the position on whether the district’s attorney has done right or has done wrong, the Court of Appeals has that question,” Belinfante said. “The state Senate is entitled to investigate whether there is a need to reform practices, and it specifically identifies there’s state money that flows to district attorney’s offices.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

The criminal investigation of Fulton County’s 2020 presidential interference case took another detour this week when the Georgia Court of Appeals canceled a pivotal hearing for Dec. 5.

The court posted a notice Monday canceling the long-scheduled December hearing to consider a demand by Republican President-elect Donald Trump and his co-defendants that the court should remove Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis from the years-long racketeering prosecution.

The filing did not explain the reason for canceling next month’s appeals court hearing.

This week’s development is the latest twist in the case that’s been sidetracked for several months in the appellate court while Trump mounted a successful campaign bid that won him a second term in the White House by defeating Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.

The uncertainty surrounding the future of the felony racketeering case against Trump and his co-defendants increased with Trump’s pending inauguration, set to take place Jan. 20.

The Georgia court was set to hear the petition from Trump and co-defendants who want to disqualify Willis due to her prior romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to lead the election interference case.

Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis said there could be several reasons behind the appellate court’s decision to cancel oral arguments next month.

“I think folks really need to not speculate wildly here,” Kreis posted on X Tuesday.”They may think the facts established don’t show any conflict and dismiss it as improvidently granted. They may think the legal standard is clear and they can simply apply it without oral argument. They may send it back to Judge McAfee to address how to proceed post-election. My guess is they’re sending it back, but I’m just spitballing as is anyone unless they’re a CoA judge with inside knowledge.”

In August 2022, a Fulton grand jury indicted Trump and 18 of his allies on multiple charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election by fewer than 12,000 votes in Georgia.

Four people originally indicted by a Fulton grand jury have already pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in the racketeering case. Their plea agreement requires them to testify against Trump and the other 14 remaining defendants, as well as write letters of apology.

The appeal of a lower court ruling that held Willis could remain on the case came from Trump and several co-defendants, including former Trump campaign officer Michael Roman, former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition from Meadows seeking to move his charges from state court to federal court.

If Willis is disqualified, then the case would be sent to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia for a new prosecutor to be assigned.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

The Georgia State Election Board will hold its first post-election meeting on Monday, where it is set to consider resuming its recent push to change Georgia’s election rules and stir the debate anew about counties review controversial mass voter challenges.

The State Election Board meeting is scheduled to begin Monday morning with a public comment period where people can discuss the board’s wishlist sketched out on a significantly condensed agenda, at least in contrast to marathon-length meetings recently held in a rush to enforce several new electoral rules by the Nov. 5th election.

On Nov. 5, President-elect Donald Trump won the election decisively in Georgia and six other swing states over Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, an outcome celebrated by Georgia Republicans waging the ongoing legal battle over the recent rulemaking of the State Election Board.

Three members of the board, Janelle King, Janice Johnston and Rick Jeffares, were publicly praised as “pit bulls” for victory at an Atlanta campaign rally by Trump this fall for their efforts to change the game for voters ahead of Georgia’s November election.

On Monday’s Georgia election board agenda are two rule amendment petitions filed by Lucia Frazier of Roswell, which would require each county to make public a list of all eligible voters during and after every election. Frazier wants the state board to mandate that counties post a numbered list of voters no later than five days after every primary, election, or run-off.

The file would include the name of every voter along with their voter ID, precinct, and check-in time and must be available for two years after the election.

“The intent of this petition is to have the State Election Board adopt a rule change to affirm existing Georgia law in that citizens of Georgia have access to all data generated in the process of elections,” Frazier wrote.

In September, Frazier’s husband, Republican activist Jason Frazier, retracted his lawsuit alleging Fulton County election officials failed to remove ineligible voters from their registration lists.

The State Election Board will continue the debate Monday following a report by Executive Director Mike Coan that assessed how election boards are handling mass voter challenges in Fulton and other metro Atlanta counties.

The Trump-aligned Georgia election board members all voted last month against their two colleagues to ask state lawmakers to update rules that would make it more difficult for county election boards to reject thousands of challenges to voters’ eligibility.

With two new conservative board members appointed this year, the board meetings became the site of a heated debate over several election administration proposals pushed by the Republican majority.

Georgia’s board, which has no direct role in determining election results, writes rules to ensure that elections run smoothly and hears complaints about alleged violations. The state Legislature creates laws that govern elections, a principle upheld as King, Johnston and Jeffares tried to advance their agenda since this summer.

Democrats and voting rights groups fear that a recently cemented majority of right-leaning Republican partisans on the board could push the limits of state law with rules hindering the effective administration of elections and the swift certification of results.

The Georgia Supreme Court has agreed to review the legality of several rules passed this year by Georgia election officials.

Georgia Supreme Court delays ruling on controversial election board rules until after Nov. 5

Madeline Summerville, an Atlanta-based attorney and political analyst, said she hopes the outcome of this November’s election will lead to fewer petitions to change Georgia’s election rules pushed at the election board’s meetings, which have often been packed with people waving signs, demanding changes like a requirement for hand counts of paper ballots.

The 2024 general election will prove the current election administration protocols are working as intended and disprove widespread fraud claims, she said.

The upcoming Legislative session is likely the place where new election rules will be put in place, Summerville said.

“I think that in the future you are likely to see fewer of these pushes simply because the people who are pushing them got the outcome they wanted,” she said. “But I do think the state Legislature will try to take up whatever the strongest arguments are and drop the rest.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

The Georgia Court of Appeals’ scheduled Dec. 5 hearing on the latest development in the Fulton County racketeering indictments of President-elect Donald Trump and his allies remains on track despite results of the presidential election last week.

The state appellate court is set to hear arguments Dec. 5 on the request from the former Republican president and several co-defendants seeking to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the 2020 presidential election interference case. The amount of uncertainty has grown around the future of the case following Trump’s decisive win over Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Legal experts said they expect the appellate hearing to remain on schedule as the court considers the petition to disqualify Willis because of a prior romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she had hired to lead the case.

Questions still linger about the felony racketeering case against Trump and his remaining 14 co-defendants has mostly been on hold until after a ruling is made on the appeal.

A U.S. Justice Department precedent dating back to the Watergate era holds that the federal law enforcement agency can’t prosecute a sitting president.

Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis said the options for Willis are to drop the charges against Trump and proceed against the other defendants or find another legal mechanism or to wait until after Trump leave’s office in 2029 before resuming the case against the outgoing president.

Any possibility of Trump’s case not being prosecuted until 2029 would likely be the result of negotiations or a court order, Kreis said.

“While Donald Trump can’t be tried while he’s sitting in the White House, there’s nothing preventing Fani Willis from pursuing the charges against everyone else,” Kreis said. “That second option is unclear how it works because generally we don’t let charges hold in abstinence for four years.”

Former Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter agreed that Willis’ ability to continue prosecuting Trump is greatly limited following the election.

“I don’t realistically see her going after Trump and the co-defendants,” he said. “Her options to me are to dismiss the whole case No. 1 or No. 2, try the co-defendants and leave Trump for another day or not at all.”

Porter said that Willis might be able to successfully stall the case until Trump’s leaves office even though Trump’s lawyers would argue she was denying his right to a speedy trial. Porter is not optimistic about Willis’ chances of surviving the upcoming appellate court decision, which is expected in 2025.

“I think just from looking at the way the wind is blowing I think she’ll have a hard enough time not getting recused,” Porter said. “I don’t think she’s going into a friendly court.”

Trump and 18 others were indicted in August 2022 for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. President Joe Biden’s Georgia win was confirmed by multiple recounts and audits, and all court challenges to his victory were unsuccessful.

Four people have already pleaded guilty to misdemeanor changes in the Fulton election case. Their plea agreement requires them to testify against Trump and the other 14 remaining defendants.

If Willis is disqualified, then the case would be sent to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia for a new prosecutor to be assigned.

The appeal came from Trump and co-defendants including former Trump campaign officer Michael Roman, former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition from Meadows seeking to move his charges from state court to federal court.

The Georgia Court of Appeals disqualification hearing will proceed whether Trump is part of the case or not, Kreis said.

“That’ll happen no matter what because most of the co-defendants have joined in the appeal,” Kreis said. “Whether or not Trump is still one of the defendants, the issue is still alive.”

Georgia state senators assert power to subpoena after Fulton DA skips investigative hearing

The push from Republican officials for Willis to drop the case intensified in the days following last week’s election. Alpharetta Republican state Sen. Brandon Beach said Friday that it’s time to lower the temperature in politics while also calling for an end to the Fulton election interference case.

“The American people have delivered a historically significant vote in favor of the strong leadership Donald Trump brings to the White House, signaling a rejection of politically influenced lawfare,” Beach said in a statement. “Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should follow the example set by the Department of Justice and Special Counsel Jack Smith by immediately dismissing the criminal indictments against President Trump and other innocent persons in Fulton County.”

The Nov. 5 general election also resulted in Willis easily winning a second term as the top prosecutor in the Democratic stronghold of Fulton County. Should the high-profile election interference case fail, Willis’ decision to pursue the probe in the first place could come under greater scrutiny.

“There’s sort of an old saying that if you get reelected, you have about a six month honeymoon period,” Porter said. “If you make a controversial decision, you have three-and-a-half years for the public to forget it. I think probably if she’s going to dismiss the case then she should do it pretty early.”

Trump’s federal cases hit stumbling block

When a grand jury in Fulton County indicted Trump and 18 others on racketeering and conspiracy charges in August 2023, it was the fourth case that year that pressed criminal charges against Trump.

A federal election interference case against Trump now appears to be winding down after special prosecutor Jack Smith asked a federal judge Friday to suspend case deadlines after Trump’s election.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to oversee federal investigations into Trump for his connection to the Jan. 6, 2021 breach at the U.S. Capitol and for the classified documents stored at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Trump has publicly stated that after his Jan. 20 inauguration he will promptly fire Smith, who indicted Trump on charges of illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election and for allegedly mishandling of documents marked classified.

Prosecutors have appealed a Florida judge’s decision to dismiss charges related to Trump alleging he illegally removed classified documents from the White House.

In another case, a New York judge said Tuesday that he will issue a decision next week on whether Trump had presidential immunity that should have protected him from being convicted of falsifying business records by a jury this spring. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in July asserts that presidents have immunity from facing criminal charges for acts conducted in their official capacity.

Trump legal case in New York on hold as prosecution studies effect of presidential win

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 26 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments promised to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Kreis said there is some legal justification for pursuing co-defendants of Trump even if a president is legally shielded from criminal charges.

“I think you could make a forceful argument that it’s essential that people who are subordinates and allies know they will be tried for their crimes if they assist a president in unlawful conduct,” he said.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

The right wing of the Georgia State Election Board that champions rules favored by GOP supporters of President-elect Donald is set to get back to its agenda after court decisions thwarted past attempts to implement the changes before November.

The fight for voting rights in Georgia intensified after the 2020 presidential election, when Trump and his supporters falsely claimed that widespread voting fraud had cost him his reelection bid.

The debate over the sweeping changes to Georgia’s election rules continued last week with the conclusion of Tuesday’s presidential election, which saw Trump defeat Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris to win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.

The 5.3 million vote turnout for this year’s general election, including 4 million votes cast in person at polls early and absentee ballots, was cited as evidence by Republican lawmakers behind 2021 election overhaul and subsequent election rules changes leading up to the Nov. 5 election.

Republicans in Georgia disputed the claims of voter suppression after Democratic nominee Joe Biden defeated President Trump in the 2020 election. A battle over election rules continues to play out this year before the Georgia State Election Board, which meets next on Nov. 18.

Georgia has until Nov. 23 to certify the election results.

Trump easily surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next president, thanks in part to Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. In the Nov. 5 election, Trump defeated Harris by 2.7 million votes to 2.5 million, a sharp contrast to the 2020 election, when Trump famously lost by just under 12,000 votes to Joe Biden in Georgia.

The battle over key election rules is still set to play out before the Georgia Supreme Court, which will hold hearings on the Republican National Committee’s appeal of a Fulton County judge invalidating new statewide procedures. Attorneys for the state and the Republican groups argued for the pressing need to have rules in place in time for the general election for daily reporting on absentee ballots, new ID requirements for dropping off absentee ballots, hand counting paper ballots and broader discretion for local election boards to investigate the way a county conducts an election before certification.

Attorney Marc Elias, who challenged conservative election rules on behalf of progressive and Democratic groups, pledged to continue to do so following the Nov. 5 presidential election. Elias’s Democracy Docket team was hired this year to assist the Harris campaign with multiple aspects of the election program, including voter protection, recounts, and other litigation challenging state voting laws.

Ellis wrote in an online blog that despite the “chilling realization” of Trump’s impending victory, Harris’s speech resonated reinforced their advocacy to protect democracy that began with Hillary Clinton’s concession speech to Trump in the 2016 presidential election

“Hillary’s concession speech helped guide me to a worldview that has served me well ever since, Elias wrote Nov. 7 on Democracy Docket. “I will always be an admirer of her tenacity and grit. But in her speech, Kamala spoke to what I value and who I am. We all owe Kamala a lot for her fight and perseverance. But I owe her much more. We will fight. And when we fight we win.”

The three GOP board members who have been publicly praised by Trump are expected to continue pushing for new rules such as requiring three poll workers at every precinct after polls close on election nights to individually count paper ballots to confirm whether the hand tally matches the number of machine-counted ballots.

The State Election Board has also called for a highly controversial change giving the county election board’s new discretion over certifying election results. The three Republican state election officials are asking the court to clarify state law in order to give local election board officials the ability to examine election records and the right to cite any vote discrepancies or other election irregularities as a reason to refuse to certify the election results.

The State Election Board has been forced to defend against a flurry of lawsuits since former GOP state Sen. Rick Jeffares and political media personality Janelle King were appointed earlier this year to the five-member board. The controversial rules were often approved by a 3-2 majority, with Fulton County Republican Janice Johnston joining Sandy Springs’ King and Henry County’s Jeffares in advancing the proposed changes until the rules were finalized several weeks later.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

The Fulton County and Cherokee County election boards are the latest venues for Republican grievances challenging the legitimacy of vote tabulations and the partisan makeup of local boards.

The latest election board drama is part of the lingering fallout from the controversial 2020 presidential election in which Joe Biden upset Republican Donald Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes in Georgia.

GOP-appointed Fulton election board member Julie Adams alleged in a recent lawsuit that she was denied access to election records necessary for certification of the May 21 primary.

In addition, the Cherokee County Commission voted last week to maintain the equal partisan split on the election board despite the efforts of the local Republican party to gain control.

Adams abstained from voting on May 28 claiming the Fulton election board had illegally permitted its staff to run elections in a county plagued by shoddy election operations in recent years.

In her lawsuit, Adams argues that election board members like herself have the authority to refuse to certify election results. After the 2020 election, a number of Georgia Republicans who embraced Trump’s unfounded claims about massive voter fraud have publicly pushed back on election boards certifying results in subsequent elections.

Election experts predict this year’s primary provides a template for what will happen in the November general election, especially if the GOP loses in a rematch of the 2020 contest between Biden and Trump.

Adams’ lawsuit claims she abstained from certifying the results because she was not provided access to lists of absentee ballots returned, digital images of ballots, or records showing the number of votes cast by specific Dominion Voting System machines and other election information.

Adams is asking a judge to determine that elections board members are not required to certify results.

“It’s time to fix the problems in our elections by ensuring compliance with the law, transparency in election conduct and accuracy in results,” she said in a statement.

According to the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, Adams’ lawsuit is doomed to fail because Georgia law does not give local board members the discretion to refuse to certify election results. The organization asserts that local election boards have a purely ministerial role in certifying election results.

“The process of election certification is not, as Adams alleges, an opportunity for verification or auditing of the results—this happens throughout the counting and canvassing process—and there are other mechanisms in state law to address alleged errors, irregularities, or fraud,” the Democracy Project statement reads. “Adams’ refusal to certify and subsequent lawsuit marks the latest attempt by a local election official to circumvent their legal obligation to certify election results in order to disrupt election processes, spread unfounded claims about our elections, and undermine confidence in election results.”

Peter Simmons, Georgia policy advocate at Protect Democracy, said Adams’ lawsuits are part of a steady drumbeat of claims seeking to distort elections and cast doubt on the integrity of their conduct.

Adams’ legal challenge is supported by the Trump-aligned America Policy First Institute think tank.

“We believe that all of these concerted anti-democratic efforts are intended to send a certain political message that (their) intention is to empower bad actors to overturn the 2024 election if it’s unfavorable to them,” Simmons said Friday in an interview with the Georgia Recorder.

Georgia Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikema Williams said her party will continue to counter the messages of doubt being spread by officials like Adams.

“The Democratic Party of Georgia will continue to combat Trump’s efforts to undermine our democracy and ensure local elections are certified, which is required by law.” said the U.S. congresswoman from Atlanta.

Fulton’s politically partisan debate could mark a trend among Georgia’s local election boards.

Local officials in Cherokee, a conservative northern suburb of Atlanta, appointed a little-known Democrat to fill one of the four election board seats that have traditionally been split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. The chair of the board is selected by the other members of the board.

Cherokee Republicans failed to gain the edge they sought on the county board, while the local Democratic Party was disappointed the county commission refused to reappoint the member it had nominated to serve.

Despite the commission’s appointment of supposed “moderate” Democrat Scott Little, local Democrats questioned the legitimacy of someone they claimed had voted for GOP candidates in prior elections.

Another fight over the makeup of local election boards occurred in Spalding County in December 2021 following the passage of the state’s 2021 election law overhaul. Three Black women representing the Democratic Party on the Spalding board were replaced by three white Republicans.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

The Fulton County 2020 presidential election interference case is pressing ahead with court hearings taking place for several of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the sweeping racketeering case.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee presided over proceedings last week involving a state lawmaker, a former Kanye West publicist and the ex-director of Black Voices for Trump, who have pleaded not guilty to charges alleging they conspired to overturn Trump’s loss in Georgia’s 2020 election.

The hearings were the latest indication that normal court proceedings will continue in state court while the Georgia Court of Appeals is considering a motion to remove District Attorney Fani Willis from the case against Trump and 14 remaining co-defendants.

Attorneys for Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, a Norcross Republican, argued on May 29 that several criminal charges against him should be tossed out due to flaws in the indictment.

Still has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts that include forgery and making false statements and writings connected to a Dec. 14, 2020 meeting where he served as a Republican alternative elector who voted to declare Trump the winner in Georgia’s presidential contest.

State prosecutors contend that Still was one of 16 GOP alternative electors who illegally impersonated a public officer in an attempt to circumvent the legally certified results declaring Joe Biden the winner in Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes.

A motion from Still argues that the indictment defining his role as “public officer” who forged false electoral certification documents is too ambiguous in state law.

Still began his first term in the legislature in January. The former Georgia Republican Party finance chairman was nominated as an elector nine months prior to the November 2020 election.

His attorneys argue that Still was acting on the advice of attorneys connected to Trump and the Republican Party who said the alternate slate of electors was necessary in case a court ruled in favor of lawsuits filed by the Georgia GOP chairman and Trump challenging Georgia’s election results. Trump’s multiple court challenges were all rejected or withdrawn.

Still’s lawyer, Thomas Beaver, said the meeting was videotaped, took place during an early afternoon inside the Georgia Capitol and was attended by various state Republican Party officials, attorneys working on behalf of the GOP and Trump and others.

“One can disagree with their politics, but it is hard to imagine a gathering of more solid citizens, if you will, than the ones who were assembled in that room that my client was present in that day,” Beaver said. “It’s not exactly the rounding up of the usual suspects for the commission of a crime or a fraud.”

Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Will Wooten argued that the appellate courts have used a threshold to define certain terms based on what they mean to someone of average intelligence.

“Public officer” isn’t some complex arcane term. It’s something that I think most people would understand the meaning of,” Wooten said.

On Aug. 14, a Fulton grand jury indicted Trump and 18 other defendants on charges alleging that the former president, several members of the former president’s inner circle, and other supporters were involved in a multi-state conspiracy to interfere with the 2020 election.

Prosecutors have struck plea deals with four codefendants, including attorneys Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, and Sidney Powell and Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall.

Still’s hearing leads the Georgia Recorder’s latest installment of the Fulton 19 case roundup.

Trump New York conviction turns up attention in Georgia

An interesting twist in the Fulton saga occurred Thursday when Trump was found guilty of 34 hush-money charges in a New York court.

There are questions regarding how Trump’s felony conviction in New York could affect pending trials in Georgia and three other jurisdictions, but legal pundits note that Trump could face stronger legal consequences if he is found guilty in one of the other cases.

In January, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Wills filed a motion seeking to begin Trump’s trial and that of his co-defendants in August.

Trump’s attorneys have sought to delay trials in the nation’s capital and Georgia until after the November presidential election when Trump is expected to face President Biden in a rematch of the 2020 campaign.

Several other defendants have challenged that timeline, and the odds against a trial starting this year became even longer when a state appeals court agreed May 9 to review McAfee’s decision to reject a motion to disqualify Willis from the case after she admitted to a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she hired to lead the probe.

Floyd wants to recount 2020 ballots

McAfee agreed last week to give the lawyer for Harrison Floyd until July before he holds the next hearing to consider the subpoena request to inspect a trove of election records. Floyd was the former head of Black Voices for Trump who is accused of intimidating Fulton County poll workers targeted by the former president’s supporters who falsely claimed they conspired to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia.

Former Kanye West publicist Kutti, Floyd, and Chicago pastor Stephen Cliffgard Lee are accused by Fulton prosecutors of attempting to illegally coerce former county election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss into falsely admitting they counted fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election.

The three defendants face multiple counts that include the overarching racketeering and conspiracy offense, conspiracy to commit solicitation of false statements and writings, and influencing witnesses.

McAfee granted Floyd’s attorneys more time Tuesday to amend a subpoena with more specifics in order to streamline the production of evidence.

Floyd claims he should not have been charged in the racketeering case because his concerns about voter fraud and questions about the election results were legitimate and remain unresolved despited state election officials conducting multiple recounts and audits certifying Biden’s victory. The Maryland resident wants access to more than 500,000 Fulton County voter ballots from 2020 so he can try to prove discrepancies with the official election results.

Floyd’s lawyer Tuesday expressed frustration with the Fulton District Attorney’s office for not providing more information regarding the legal facts surrounding Floyd’s charges.

Fulton prosecutors countered that the current subpoena is so broad that it would require thousands of staff hours to complete.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said he found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 contest that included three separate counts of the ballots and investigating several hundred claims of voting fraud.

Floyd was the only defendant out of the 19 charged in the sweeping racketeering case who spent time in custody following the Aug. 14 grand jury indictments.

Social media alerts publicist of Fulton hearing

Tuesday’s Superior Court hearing wrapped up with Kutti announcing via Zoom video streaming that she’s hired new counsel to represent her.

Kutti informed McAfee that she was unaware that Tuesday’s proceeding was taking place until she began receiving a string of notifications on X, formerly known as Twitter, which alerted her that a status hearing was scheduled that afternoon.

Kutti said she has hired Albany attorney George Donaldson, who becomes the fourth lawyer defending Kuttt in the case. The three previous attorneys Darryl Cohen, Steve Greenberg, and Joshua Herman withdrew from the case in December. The lawyers did not provide a reason for leaving the case when they filed their motion.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is expected to decide in the coming days whether District Attorney Fani Willis can continue prosecuting the case against former President Donald Trump that charges him with leading a conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election.

McAfee’s decision will come after lawyers for Trump and his 14 co-defendants make closing arguments following two days of contentious court hearings last week over a motion to remove the Fulton D.A. following accusations of prosecutorial misconduct by enriching herself during a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired for the case in November 2021.

Willis has strongly denied allegations that she or Wade misappropriated taxpayer funds for personal gain because of their relationship outside of the workplace. The motion to disqualify her is centered on that issue, as opposed to the recently disclosed nature of the romantic relationship between Willis and Wade.

Over the course of Thursday and Friday, state and defense witnesses ranged from Willis and Wade to Willis’ father, former Gov. Roy Barnes, the D.A.’s former friend and ex-employee and Wade’s former law partner and divorce attorney.

McAfee is expected to make a final decision on whether to proceed with the case under the supervision of Willis’ office after the closing arguments in the hearing take place in about a week.

If the judge removes Willis and the rest of the Fulton D.A. staff from the case, then it would leave it up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find another district attorney ready to take on the case for it to continue.

The outcome of the landmark case could factor into Willis’ campaigning this year for a second term as district attorney that will place her under a much brighter spotlight than when she won against Paul Howard in 2020.

According to Charles Bullock, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, Willis’ re-election bid would be affected the most by the election interference case if she faces stiff opposition in the Democratic primary.

If McAfee rules that Willis showed bad judgment by dating Wade, but did nothing worth disqualifying her, then the case likely moves forward with scheduling the trial and finding out if more co-defendants enter pleas, Bullock said.

Willis has been pushing for a late summer trial start for Trump and as many as 14 co-defendants facing felony and racketeering and conspiracy charges.

“She’s obviously a politically savvy person, so she recognizes the biggest impact would be a (Trump) conviction before the election,” he said.

Bullock said that although a number of cases have captivated the nation’s attention over the years, this is the first time the focus has shifted so far away from whether the prosecutor has sufficient evidence to convict the defendants.

Bullock said if the judge removes Willis from the case then she may rally voters by saying she was trying to protect the integrity of Georgia’s elections before the judge took her off the case.

“Because Fulton County is so heavily Democratic, she might well be able to portray herself as a martyr,” he said. “But if the case moves forward and she does draw opposition for D.A., it’s going to take some of her attention away from the case.”

Star witness takes stand on Day 2

Lawyers representing Trump and his co-defendants questioned on Friday a reluctant “star witness” about details they argued would have proved Wade and Willis had lied about when they first became romantically involved.

During two hours of questioning, defense lawyers sought to have Terrance Bradley, Nathan Wade’s former law partner and ex-divorce attorney, contradict testimony from Wade and Willis, who claimed they did not start dating until several months after Wade was hired as special prosecutor in November 2021.

Bradley reluctantly admitted Thursday that for several months he exchanged text messages and email with Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney for co-defendant Michael Roman who publicly disclosed accusations about Willis and Wade in January.

Bradley testified that he sent Merchant a text saying “looks good” after reviewing her motion to dismiss documents prior to them being filed with the court last month. He also testified that he did not have personal knowledge about the romantic relationship that would fall outside of attorney-client privilege.

By the time Bradley left the witness stand on Friday, his credibility was damaged after he reluctantly disclosed under cross examination to state prosecutors that his law partnership split with Wade was the result of an employee accusing Bradley of sexual assault.

Earlier that day, Bradley claimed the details of the law firms’ split were protected by attorney-client privilege since it involved a disagreement he had with Wade about Wade’s divorce case.

Fulton special prosecutor Anna Cross said that Bradley’s initial denial that workplace sexual misconduct accusations were the reason the partnership ended raises doubt about how much more of his testimony about Wade is untruthful.

McAfee said he would meet with Bradley and his attorney in private to learn more about the extent of Bradley’s attorney-client privilege claim.

“Mr. Bradley previously testified that the reason he left the firm was totally, completely covered by privilege,” McAfee said. “When asked by the state, he went into a factual scenario that, to my mind, I don’t see how it relates to privilege at all. And so now I’m left wondering if Mr. Bradley has been properly interpreting privilege this entire time.”

Trump attorney Steve Sadow said that if during the taped interview with McAfee, Bradley provides information contradicting Wade, then those details could remain under seal if the judge determines it is confidential.

“None of us are going to know that in fact occurred and the court is going to be in a position of making a determination on the motion even though the court knows that it doesn’t have all the truthful information,” Sadow said.

DA’s father explains cash theory

John Floyd, Willis’s father and a retired attorney, testified that his lifelong money advice to his daughter is the reason she had enough cash to repay Wade for her share of travel expenses.

Floyd said that his philosophy is to keep several months’ worth of living expenses within a house safe and always have some cash with him in public stemmed from an experience decades ago when a diner refused to accept his credit cards because he was Black. According to Floyd, Black people generally know the importance of keeping some cash on hand at home and in public places.

Willis and Wade were grilled by defense attorneys during the hearing about their claims that the district attorney regularly repaid Wade with large sums of cash.

“I’m not trying to be racist, but it’s a Black thing,” Floyd said.

Floyd, who moved into his daughter’s home in 2019 and lived with her until early 2021, testified that Willis was dating someone other than Wade throughout 2019.

Floyd said the first time he remembers meeting Wade was in 2023 and that he didn’t know about Willis dating Wade until it was revealed in the Roman defense motion January.

He also testified that he has only seen his daughter about a dozen times since she was forced to leave her south Fulton home due to constant threats related to her job.

Former governor rejects job offer

Former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes testified Friday that he declined to be named special prosecutor in the election interference case a few weeks before Wade accepted the position.

Barnes, who served as governor from 1999-2003 before returning to his private law practice, said he was not comfortable taking on the time-consuming and pressure-packed probe into the former president and his supporters. Barnes’ testimony allowed the state to show that Wade wasn’t Willis’ first choice as the lead prosecutor.

He said Willis offered him the job during an hour-long meeting in October 2021.

“I lived with bodyguards for four years and I didn’t like it,” said Barnes. “I wasn’t going to live with bodyguards for the rest of my life.”

Barnes described Wade as very organized, which is essential when handling a case of this magnitude.

“I’ve watched him over the years so I wasn’t surprised that he was acting as a special prosecutor,” Barnes said.

Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted under Georgia racketeering laws for their alleged roles in challenging the 2020 election that the former president says was rigged for Joe Biden. Four of the people initially charged in August subsequently filed guilty pleas.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

The chairman of a Georgia Senate panel pledged on Friday that his committee will be on a fact finding mission during its investigation into whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis misappropriated taxpayer money as she pursued a sweeping felony racketeering case against Donald Trump and a number of his allies.

In its first meeting held on Friday, the Senate Special Committee on Investigations approved rules and provided insight into how the panel, which consists of six Republicans and three Democrats, will conduct its investigations into a Fulton district attorney, who admitted on Feb. 4 that she had a romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Wade was appointed by Willis in November 2021 to assist in the prosecution of the 2020 election interference case against Trump and 18 other defendants.

Athens Republican Sen. Bill Cowsert said the special committee’s objective is to find the truth and not conduct partisan biased investigations into Willis’ decision to pursue a case against the former Republican president, several members of Trump’s inner circle and others in the historic racketeering case.

The special panel does not have the authority to remove Willis from the case or office but does have subpoena powers that could be used to try to get Willis, Wade or other potential witnesses to testify.

“It is not within our authority or our scope to disqualify counsel in any ongoing investigations. It is not part of our job to disbar anybody or to bring professional allegations of misconduct against anybody,” said Cowsert, an attorney who chairs the committee.

“It is not the charge of this committee to in any way interfere with any ongoing criminal prosecutions and that is not where this committee will go,” Cowsert said. “Our job is to investigate many of these troubling allegations that have come forward in these last few months, and determine what the true facts are.”

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has scheduled a court hearing on Thursday on defense motions seeking to remove Willis from the case on arguments that her relationship with Wade is a conflict of interest and misuse of taxpayer funds for personal gain.

Willis, who has rejected calls for her to be disqualified from the case, did not attend Friday’s hearing inside the state Capitol.

Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler raised questions Friday about the committee’s ability to overcome partisan bias during its investigation into Willis, a Democrat elected in 2020 as Fulton’s top prosecutor.

“It is my hope that this committee conducts itself in a responsible fashion and pursues the truth, nothing but the truth,” said the Stone Mountain Democrat. “I think a political witch hunt or show trial would damage Georgians’ faith in both our political and legal system.”

Willis has said that she and Wade strictly had a professional relationship and were friends prior to Wade’s appointment to the case in November 2021. The relationship became romantic in 2022, said Willis, who accused defense lawyers of trying to manufacture a conflict of interest based on irrelevant allegations.

Wade has been paid more than $650,000 since being appointed by Willis as a lead prosecutor in the historic case against Trump and the former Republican president’s co-defendants.

In early January, an attorney for Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official and one of Trump’s Fulton co-defendants, accused Willis and Wade of being romantically involved while financially profiting off their relationship. In a divorce filing, Wade’s estranged wife released credit card statements under Wade’s name showing roundtrip airline tickets purchased for himself and Willis to San Francisco and Miami in 2022 and 2023.

In a Feb. 7 online article published by Slate, Western Carolina University ethics professor J. Tom Morgan, the former district attorney for DeKalb County, said the details of Wade’s relationship with Willis don’t appear to violate the state’s ethics code for lawyers. Morgan said that there is no evidence that Willis or Wade engaged in improper financial kickbacks that would compromise the election interference case.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

In recent days, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has seen the historic criminal conspiracy case she brought against Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and his allies take a dramatic turn of the tables.

A Cobb County divorce court filing on Friday showing the purchase of two roundtrip flights for Willis and a special prosecutor Nathan Wade became the latest twist since an attorney for Michael Roman , a former Trump campaign official and one of Trump’s Fulton co-defendants, accused Willis and Wade of having an improper romantic relationship.

In Friday’s court filing, Wade’s estranged wife, Joceyln Wade, claimed that she was not made aware in November 2021 that her husband had been hired by Willis to serve as a special prosecutor for the election interference investigation that would result in the lengthy felony indictment in August of Trump and 18 co-defendants.

The emergency motion submitted Friday by Alpharetta attorney Andrea Hastings comes in response to Willis filing a protective order against Jocelyn Wade. Jocelyn Wade was seeking to depose Willis in the divorce case in order to discern if the district attorney was having an improper relationship with Wade.

Wade’s plane ticket purchases became public a day after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee scheduled a Feb. 15 hearing to discuss the allegations that a romantic relationship constitutes prosecutorial misconduct that should prevent Willis from overseeing the election case in the future.

Willis defended the professional reputation of Wade during a Jan. 14 church service. A former prosecutor, Wade has served as a Cobb County municipal judge for a decade and is a partner with an Atlanta firm that specializes in cases involving personal injury claims, family and domestic law, contract litigation and criminal defense.

The Wades’ divorce court drama leads the latest installment of the Georgia Recorder’s update on the sweeping Fulton 2020 presidential election case.

Time-consuming evidence court hearing

Wade was also part of a team of prosecutors who attended Friday’s election interference court hearing for co-defendant Harrison Floyd.

McAfee appeared irked at times during a hearing in which Floyd’s attorney Chris Kachouroff protested that the Fulton County was not promptly complying with the subpoenas requests. Kachouroff complained about how long it’s taking to receive documents Floyd contends will raise questions about the credibility of 2020 presidential election results in which Democrat Joe Biden had a nearly 12,000 vote edge over Trump in Georgia.

The subpoenaed documents included hundreds of thousands of ballot images and other election related documents that have been a time-consuming process for Fulton employees to produce.

One potential solution suggested by Kachouroff on Friday was that he could let the clerk’s office borrow a high-speed scanner that could greatly reduce the workload.

McAfee set a Feb. 2 deadline for Floyd’s team to more narrowly craft their request in order to give a more reasonable timeframe to receive the information. The judge also encouraged the attorneys for the state and Floyd to have more amicable communication outside of court about how evidence would be exchanged.

Floyd, a former leader of Black Voices for Trump, has pleaded not guilty to allegations of threatening and harassing an ex-Fulton election worker after the 2020 election.

Eastman makes surprise courtroom visit

Fulton co-defendant John Eastman made an unexpected appearance at Friday’s court hearing, and his attorney was able get some time to argue before the judge that the indictment did not sufficiently describe how the co-defendants were connected in a criminal enterprise.

Eastman said he wanted to get an in-person view of the Fulton courtroom on Friday while he was visiting Atlanta for a fundraiser. His attorney Buddy Parker then argued in court that the indictment lacks specific details indicating how Eastman made false statements during a post-2020 election virtual Zoom presentation to a state Senate subcommittee.

Parker took exception to the indictment stating that Eastman was among several co-defendants who “corruptly” solicited Georgia legislators to appoint their own slate of presidential electors for the purpose of casting votes for Trump.

“The word corruptly is an interesting word because it would appear to connote a degree of (wrongdoing) or a specific intent,” Parker said. “What is it that makes what was said corrupt?”

John Floyd, a special assistant district attorney general, responded that Eastman is implicated in the indictment for being involved in 16 of the 161 “overt acts” illegally committed by the alleged members of the election interference enterprise. The indictment lists Eastman’s communications with everyone from Georgia lawmakers to Trump to former Vice President Mike Pence, who would later oversee the process of Congress counting electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The state isn’t required to allege the details of overt acts at all,” said Floyd, who’s considered the leading authority on Georgia’s RICO law. “We don’t have to allege elements. We don’t have to get into things like corruptly, which really just means illegally in a context like this.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday afternoon to consider prosecutors’ request to revoke Harrison Floyd’s bond for allegedly making incendiary statements about witnesses in the 2020 presidential election interference case.

McAfee’s ruling will determine whether the ex-director of Black Voices for Trump, will have to return to the same Atlanta jail where Floyd spent several days in August after a grand jury indicted him on charges alleging that he, Donald Trump and 17 of their co-defendants illegally conspired to try to reverse the GOP incumbent Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss to the Democrat’s presidential nominee Joe Biden in Georgia and several other states.

Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis cited in her Nov. 15 court filing, recent comments Floyd made about former Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman, who the state is expected to call to testify at trial about how he allegedly tried to pressure her to falsely admit to committing voting fraud while counting absentee ballots at State Farm Arena following the Nov. 3, 2020 general election. He has also launched verbal attacks against Georgia election officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Floyd, a former U.S. Marine and mixed martial arts fighter, was released from custody from the Rice Street jail on Aug. 29 after posting the $10,000 cash or property collateral required as part of his $100,000 bond on charges of racketeering and conspiracy, influencing a witness and solicitation to make false statements and writings.

Floyd was the only defendant out of the 19 charged in the sweeping racketeering case who spent time in custody following the August 14 grand jury indictments.

According to Willis, Floyd has repeatedly violated a bond agreement prohibiting him from publicly referring to co-defendants and potential witnesses.

Upon Willis’ filing of the bond motion, Floyd compared his treatment to Clarence Thomas’ claims of a “high tech lynching” at his U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991 when he was confronted with allegations of sexual harassment.

Willis also cited Floyd’s recent postings on social media about Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign attorney who recently pleaded guilty in the Fulton case. Floyd has contended that he is using social media to explain the roles that some of the state’s witnesses had in voting fraud that cost Trump the 2020 election.

Ellis was among four of the co-defendants who have provided prosecutors with videotaped statements as part of their plea agreements that require them to cooperate with prosecutors.

Additionally, Floyd is facing federal charges for confronting two FBI agents sent to serve him with a grand jury subpoena at his Maryland apartment.

Freeman has spoken publicly about how the allegations spurred so many threats from election deniers that she had to move from a Fulton County home that she lived in for two decades.

Biden was certified the winner in Georgia with a nearly 12,000 vote edge over Trump.

Fulton DA predicts trial will run through 2024 election

In a motion filed Friday afternoon, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis petitions for the trial for Trump and his co-defendants to start on August 5.

This date matches Willis’ prediction earlier this week that the trial for Trump and his remaining co-defendants would extend beyond the Nov. 5 election, in which Trump is currently favored to beat Biden again.

During a Washington Post event last week, Willis surmised that the intensive trial might last through the early January presidential inauguration. Willis had previously advocated for a March start for a four-month trial with 150 state witnesses taking the stand.

According to Willis, the later trial start should eliminate any scheduling conflicts with other legal cases Trump is facing, including a federal election interference case in Washington D.C.

Aug. 5 is several weeks after the dates set for the Republican National Convention where delegates will select the GOP presidential candidate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Recent polls show Trump as holding a significant lead over his Republican rivals for the nomination.

“I believe the trial will take many months and I don’t expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025,” Willis said last week.

Trump has pushed for the beginning of his trial to be delayed until after the end of his campaign to win a second term in the White House.

More plea deals looming?

CNN cited sources last month claiming that Fulton prosecutors have discussed plea agreements with at least six other co-defendants in an attempt to get as many co-defendants to turn against Trump as possible.

Ex-Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter and other legal experts have predicted that more co-defendants will seek deals similar to the ones reached over the last month by co-defendants and attorneys Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall.

Porter told the Georgia Recorder that Fulton prosecutors are likely to be in favor of more co-defendants avoiding prison if they provide information that implicates Trump’s role as a leader of a multi-state election interference plot.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

Do eligible jurors exist in Fulton County who haven’t formed strong opinions about Donald Trump and his allies accused of trying to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss in Georgia?

We’ll soon find out. A jury selection process is scheduled to begin on Friday for the first trial in the Fulton County 2020 presidential election interference case when 450 prospective jurors are expected to complete a lengthy questionnaire about the high-profile case.

On Monday, Fulton County prosecutors and the defense attorneys for Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro argued before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee about whether several questions gauging jurors’ opinions about prominent witnesses and Trump supporters should be included in the final cut of the jury questionnaire. On Friday, the first half of a jury pool of 900 has been summoned to the downtown Atlanta courthouse, ahead of Monday’s scheduled opening day of the trial for Chesebro and Powell.

The pair are set to be the first of the 19 defendants to stand trial in the sweeping racketeering case that alleges Trump and 18 allies illegally tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and several other states.

In Fulton County court Monday, Chesebro and Powell’s attorney argued against McAfee excluding questions about whether potential jurors believe that Trump and his associates attempted to steal their vote and whether they think that the typical Republican MAGA supporter is bigoted.

Scott Grubman, Chesebro’s attorney, said the unique circumstances of the conspiracy case being prosecuted under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act warrant a judge exercising greater discretion.

“To ask them simply, ‘are you going to be fair and impartial?’, it goes completely against all of the social science that is out there,” Grubman said. “The only people who are going to say no to that question are people who want to be off this jury. Everyone else is going to convince themselves of course I can be fair and impartial.”

McAfee said he’s likely to exclude these types of questions from the questionnaire, but said that attorneys from both sides should be able to identify potential red flags later on during the selection process.

“I get completely what you’re talking about when you say this is how we figure out what these jurors actually think,” McAfee said. “Ultimately, what I’m applying is decades of case law that says we’re not supposed to ask jurors opinions up front.”

McAfee also said he would remove an open-ended question asking for jurors’ opinions of Powell and Chesebro. In addition, he plans to work on how to rephrase how to ask potential jurors about any biases they may have toward co-defendants and District Attorney Fani Willis.

The jury survey is also expected to inquire what types of statements that a prospective juror has posted on social media regarding Trump and his allies.

“Just because it’s struck from the questionnaire doesn’t mean it’s foreclosed from going into on in individual questioning,” McAfee said. “We’re asking overall if we think there is anything outright that shows bias or fixed opinion and I don’t think we need to keep asking that a dozen different ways on the questionnaire.”

On Monday, McAfee agreed to include the names of each defendant in the questionnaire background as part of a compromise to prosecutors’ objections to the defense proposing open-ended questions about jurors’ opinions of witnesses and defendants.

Powell’s attorney Bill Rafferty pushed for the initial query to reference notable witnesses for the trial, such as Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, conservative media personality Alex Jones, Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, who served as Trump’s national security advisor.

He argued that would streamline jury selection for a monthslong case in which prosecutors plan to present the same evidence and more than 150 witnesses at each trial.

“If the government’s intention is to offer up a lot of information about President Trump, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman that has nothing to do with my client, we’d ask the court to ask jurors about their opinions about these individuals,” Rafferty said.

Prosecutors contended that asking jurors how they feel about potential state witnesses is inappropriate since it’s asking them to decide ahead of trial which side they believe is more credible.

McAfee agreed with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office not to seek jurors’ opinions about specific witnesses.

“Whether we can find a jury that’s fair and impartial is the ultimate question, so how they feel about a potential witness is unnecessary,” he said.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office and the defense attorneys representing Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell are preparing to screen jurors for the first 2020 presidential election interference trial in which Donald Trump and 18 of his allies are charged with felony racketeering charges.

Fulton prosecutors and defense attorneys for Chesebro and Powell are waiting for Superior Court Judge Scott McAffe’s approval of a jury questionnaire for 900 prospective jurors.

Attorneys for the defendants and prosecutors submitted questions last week to McAfee regarding prospective jurors’ political affiliations. McAfee said he would work out the final questions before jury selection begins.

Scott Grubman, Cheebro’s lawyer, said McAfee’s jury selection plan was too fast, affecting Chesebro’s chances of receiving a fair trial.

Last month, McAfee summoned 450 Fulton County residents to appear on the opening day of the trial, and another 450 people to appear on Oct. 27.

The pair are set to be the first Trump co-defendants to stand trial on Oct. 23 in the sweeping racketeering case.

No court dates are set yet for Trump and his 16 other co-defendants, who were all charged on Aug. 14 under Georgia’s RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).

The quest to find 12 impartial jurors and an alternate tops this roundup of recent developments in the case and things for you to know for the coming week.

New developments in voting systems breach

There will be an opportunity for Fulton district attorneys to examine new information that has been uncovered regarding a Coffee County voting system breach retrieved last week from former county election director Misty Hampton’s desktop computer.

The GBI discovered this month more than 15,000 emails and documents from Hampton’s office computer that the attorneys for the Coffee County Board of Elections had claimed were lost

Hampton’s communications were uncovered as part of an investigation sparked in 2022 by a civil lawsuit with leading plaintiffs the Coalition for Good Governance challenging the security of the state’s electronic voting system.

Hampton is accused of allowing computer specialists to hack voting systems in early 2021, alongside Powell; former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham. They face felonies for tampering with electronic ballots and tabulating machines, moving ballots without authorization and removing voter data from a computer without authorization.

The plaintiffs in the voting systems lawsuit reacted last week to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations’ retrieval of videos and other documents allegedly showing an orchestrated breach of Coffee’s voting equipment after the 2020 presidential election.

“Few people believed the bizarre claims made by the Coffee County Board of Elections and their attorneys that Misty Hampton’s emails were suddenly lost shortly after she was terminated in February 2021,” the coalition for governance said in a statement.

Scott Hall, a bail bondsman from Atlanta, entered a plea of guilty on Sept. 29 to charges related to illegally accessing voting equipment in the Coffee County elections office.

Fulton DA spars with U.S. Judiciary Chairman

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis fired back last week to U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan claiming her motives for pursuing criminal charges against Trump and 18 co-defendants is a political stunt.

Willis wrote on Wednesday that the Ohio Republican is woefully ignorant of Georgia law and the U.S. Constitution in his claims that state criminal courts are improperly regulating the actions of federal officers. Jordan also accused Willis of acting brashly in media interviews about the case.

Jordan was criticized by Willis for making comments to conservative media broadcaster Mark Levin related to his desire to investigate the criminal prosecution of the Fulton election interference case.

Earlier this month, Jordan sent Willis a letter setting a Thursday deadline to turn over any communications between her office and U.S. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith.

Willis accused Jordan of being “ignorant” for abusing his power in Congress in an attempt to obstruct the Georgia interference case.

“As I have explained, your requests implicate significant, well recognized confidentiality interests related to an ongoing criminal matter, as well as serious constitutional concerns regarding federalism and separation of powers,” she wrote on Wednesday.

Fulton DA target influential conservatives as witnesses

Two influential conservative figures were added last week to the list of potential witnesses for the trial of the former Trump attorneys.

Fulton prosecutors requested Wednesday that judges in Michigan and Texas order Alex Jones, a far-right media personality, and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to testify at the trial.

Prosecutors wrote that they plan to ask Jones about his contact with Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who orchestrated a GOP elector scheme to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in Georgia.

Jones’ attorney said that the podcast host will challenge a Fulton subpoena but if Jones has to testify, he will invoke the Fifth Amendment in order to prevent incrimination.

According to the petition, McDaniel would testify about her interactions with Trump and his attorney John Eastman regarding the alternate electoral college scheme in Georgia and several other battleground states.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis says she continue to receive personal threats for prosecuting a felony racketeering case against Donald Trump and 18 other defendants accused of attempting to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Willis said late last week that receiving an estimated 150 threats over the last two months make her worried that her life is at risk. During a Fulton County Commission meeting, Willis detailed the stress her staff and other county employees are experiencing because of the visceral reaction among Trump’s supporters to the high-profile case.

On Aug. 14, a grand jury indicted Trump and 18 other defendants in a sweeping probe alleging that the former GOP president, several members of the former president’s inner circle, and other supporters were involved in a multi-state conspiracy to interfere with the 2020 election results.

The threats are made through a variety of channels, including the county’s customer service line, her office telephone, the magistrate court, as well as through text messages and other forms of communication, Willis said.

“The demands that I am putting on my staff right now to try to track down and investigate the threats, but also keep me alive, which has become a real concern for me,” Willis said. “I have got to have people that are loyal to me and that my life means something to.”

Willis also faces the ire of state Senate Republican lawmakers, who are calling for a newly created prosecutors oversight commission to investigate her conduct in handling the election interference case.

Willis’ comments about the ongoing threats lead this week’s news roundup of developments in the election interference case and things to know about what’s ahead.

This week, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, the first two co-defendants set to go to trial on Oct. 23, suffered legal setbacks.

Judge declines to toss out co-defendant cases

Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee late last week rejected a motion to dismiss the racketeering case against Powell, who accused the D.A.’s office of committing prosecutorial misconduct and withholding evidence that would prove she was not involved in the hack of a rural Georgia voting system in the weeks after the 2020 election.

Powell’s attorney argued that Willis ignored evidence and did not interview witnesses that would have shown Powell should not have been indicted on six counts related to the January 2021 breach. The Fulton indictment alleges that Powell helped coordinate hiring Atlanta forensic computer experts to assist with accessing confidential Coffee County voting data and equipment.

McAfee said on Thursday that Powell’s attorney failed to demonstrate a baseline level of prosecutors’ prejudice that warranted throwing Powell’s case out.

McAfee followed up on Friday by also denying Chesebro’s motion to have his case dismissed because of a special prosecutor’s delay in filing paperwork.

Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade will remain involved in the election interference case despite objections from Chesebro’s attorneys.

His lawyers argued that Chesebro’s indictment should be considered void since Wade did not file an oath of office with the clerk’s office until last week.

McAfee rejected dropping Chesebro’s complaint that was based on a technical error and said that the oath is not legally required since Wade is only prosecuting a single case for the D.A.’s office.

Wade’s Cobb County law firm was hired in January 2022 to serve as lead counsel in the prosecution of case, which could involve 150 state witnesses testifying over the course of a four-month trial.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that as of Sept. 6, Wade’s firm had been paid just shy of $550,000 for the case by the DA’s office.

A $41.6 million budget was set for the Fulton District Attorney’s office for 2023, an increase of $9 million from last year. Among the largest increases are a a one-time allocation of $3 million to cover operational expenses and an additional $550,000 to cover overtime and recruit and retain employees.

Plea deal discussions ongoing

Scott Hall, a bail bondsman in Atlanta, became the first of 19 co-defendants to accept a plea bargain last month, but if prosecutors have their way, Hall won’t be the last to take a deal that avoids going to trial.

On Sept. 29, Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional election interference, which will allow him to serve his sentence on probation.

Hall agreed to testify as a state’s witness about his involvement in breaching voting equipment while visiting the Coffee County elections office several weeks after the 2020 election.

Chesebro and Powell threw a wrench into Fulton D.A.’s plans to have the 19 co-defendants tried at the same time after a judge agreed to sever their two cases once they requested a speedy trial.

Trump and the remaining 15 defendants have not been scheduled for trial. McAfee has said he’ll consider whether two trials are feasible or whether the cases should be split again.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.