CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig provided a nuanced analysis on the implications of a Fulton County judge’s decision to dismiss six charges of legal proceedings against former President Donald Trump. The decision, made by Judge Scott McAfee, was described as an “undeniable setback” for District Attorney Fani Willis in prosecuting the high-profile case.
According to Honig on “CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta,” the judge’s ruling to toss six of the forty counts against Trump and other defendants was predicated on the failure of the prosecution to specify which parts of the Constitution the defendants allegedly attempted to violate.
“What the judge says here is, you prosecutors, you have to say what part of the Constitution… that’s not in the indictment therefore the judge says those charges are legally unfounded and now they’re dismissed,” Honig explained.
The setback, however, does not remove the entirety of the charges against Trump. Specifically, the infamous phone call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, where Trump allegedly sought to overturn the election results in Georgia, remains a focal point of the case. The dismissal of charges, however, was “embarrassing for prosecutors.”
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“This does go to the indictment itself. And there is still the case. The lead charge, the racketeering case, is still in place, but this is a setback,” Honig said. The discussion also ventured into the potential for this development to impact the timeline of the trial, with Honig pessimistically noting the unlikelihood of the case reaching a verdict before the November 2024 election.
BREAKING: Six counts in Fani Willis' indictment against President Trump have been "quashed" by Judge McAfee. pic.twitter.com/Ncg0ZcEhG1
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 13, 2024
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said according to a recording of a call between the former president and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also a Republican.
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Prosecutors can still seek to bring a new indictment against former President Trump on the same charges, though the possibility of getting another shot at prosecuting the Republican frontrunner grows dimmer by the day while Willis remains mired in her own controversy that may well see her dismissed from the case.
Judge McAfee is considering whether Willis has irreparably tainted the case against Trump by hiring Nathan Wade, a fellow prosecutor with whom she engaged in a romantic affair and may have lied under oath about the timeline of their relationship.
An attorney to one of Trump’s co-defendants first raised the allegation, which quickly mushroomed into a full-blown distraction for the Democratic prosecutor. Witnesses and former friends and colleagues, including Wade’s divorce attorney, have come forward claiming that Willis and Wade were being untruthful on the stand when they claimed that their affair began only after Wade was hired in 2021.
Trump has maintained his innocence in the Georgia case as well as a federal election interference case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who is under investigation by the U.S. House in a probe exploring whether he coordinated his charges with state-level ones by Willis.
Last week, Ashleigh Merchant, attorney for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, uncovered that Willis met with Vice President Kamala Harris while pursuing charges against the leading rival to President Joe Biden.