Dem
47
GOP
53
Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis had a pretty good case against Donald Trump and 18 co-conspirators who tried to overturn the election results in Georgia. She demonstrated that love is not only blind, but also stupid, when she hired her boyfriend to handle the case, even though he had no experience as a prosecutor. In the end, both of them were thrown off the case and the leader of the state prosecutor's council, Peter Skandalakis, appointed himself to take over because he couldn't find anyone else willing to take on such a sprawling prosecution.
Skandalakis has now examined the case and decided to drop it altogether. Judge Scott McAfee accepted his decision and dismissed the case in its entirety.
Skandalakis justified his decision in ways that stretches credulity to the breaking point and beyond. He said one interpretation of the phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to find another 11,780 votes, is that Trump was making a mafia-style threat to Raffensperger. Another is that Trump was merely politely inquiring if there might be 11,780 votes lying around on floor that people had missed and he was simply asking Raffensperger to take a look-see. In a circumstance like this, Skandalakis said that the benefit of the doubt goes to the defendant. Raffensperger, however, wrote a book about his experience in 2021 and he had no doubt whatsoever about the meaning of the "request." He wrote in the book: "The president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong and I was not going to do that."
Skandalakis said that part of the problem was the Supreme Court's decision to grant presidents absolute immunity for acts falling within their constitutional authority. While threatening election officials and assembling slates of fake electors is not specifically named in the Constitution as a duty of the president, Skandalakis felt that Trump would appeal everything in the case based on that and it would go on for years. He said that bringing the case before a jury in Georgia in 2029, 2030, or 2031 would not serve the citizens of Georgia. So, in the end, the Georgia case ended up being a moneymaker for Trump. He took the mugshot of him scowling while being booked at the Fulton County jail and put it on coffee mugs and other items and sold them to supporters. It is not exactly the same as being handed a lemon and then making lemonade, but we are in that ballpark.
It didn't have to be like this. It was not realistic to prosecute Trump while he was president, but Skandalakis could have removed Trump from the case and prosecuted the other 18 defendants indicted for racketeering. He simply decided not to, even though many of the legal complications would have gone away if the other 18 were prosecuted without Trump.
Cases were brought against the conspirators in four states originally. Now Georgia is gone. What about the other three? In Michigan, the judge threw out the case against the fake electors, saying they were basically stooges who had been recruited to agree to be fake electors and couldn't possibly have known what they were doing was illegal. After all, people ask you to be a fake elector all the time. For example, we've been asked three times just this week. Case dismissed.
The Nevada case was caught up in a jurisdictional dispute until last week. Nevada AG Aaron Ford brought the case up in Las Vegas because that is where the conspiracy took place. The defendants claimed that the case should have been brought in Carson City, which is where they signed the fake certificates. Last week, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that Ford was correct in bringing the case in Clark County and it may continue there.
In Arizona, the case against 18 defendants, some of whom are cooperating with Arizona AG Kris Mayes, is ongoing. This case involves Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, the fake electors and others, but not Trump. In May 2025, Judge Sam Myers ordered the case back to the grand jury because according to him, Mayes did not thoroughly describe the Electoral Count Act (which the defendants were alleged to have violated) to the grand jury. Mayes disagrees and has appealed to the state Supreme Court and asked it to void the judge's ruling. She is waiting for a decision.
From our perspective, and that of many other people, court cases should not take 5-10 years. This is beyond absurd. William Gladstone was right: Justice delayed is justice denied. When someone is indicted by a grand jury, they have a constitutional right to a speedy trial, not one 8 years later. The way things work now, cases go on until one side has worn out the other or everybody involved has died. That is not how the justice system is supposed to work. (V)