ATLANTA — The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case on Wednesday dismissed some of the charges against former President Donald Trump, but many other counts in the indictment remain.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote in an order that six of the 41 counts in the indictment must be quashed, including three against Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
But the order leaves intact other charges, and the judge wrote that prosecutors could seek a new indictment on the charges he dismissed.
The dismissal, while reducing the total number of charges, does not remove any active defendants from the case.
The six charges in question have to do with soliciting elected officials to violate their oaths of office. That includes two charges related to the phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said on that call.
The case accuses Trump and 18 others of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state to President Joe Biden. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
The dismissal of the six counts came after Trump and five other defendants filed what's known as a "special demurrer"-- a legal filing that "challenges the form of the indictment by claiming that the defendant is entitled to additional information or specificity," wrote Judge McAfee in his Wednesday morning order.
In other words: defendants argued that prosecutors vaguely drafted the six counts in question, failing to clearly articulate how they allege the defendants broke the law.
Without that specific information, the defendants argued they couldn't fully prepare their defense.
Judge McAfee agreed.
"As written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission," wrote McAfee.
The counts in question "do not give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently," McAfee added.
Trump's attorney in the Georgia case, Steve Sadow, said in a statement that the dismissed counts had "falsely claimed that he solicited GA public officials to violate their oath of office."
"The ruling is a correct application of the law, as the prosecution failed to make specific allegations of any alleged wrongdoing on those counts," Sadow said.
However, legal experts said prosecutors could seek to reinstate the dismissed counts through a supplemental indictment with more specific language.
"The state can just go back and reindict those counts... and fix the errors if they choose," said former Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis could obtain that supplemental indictment quickly, said former Dekalb County district attorney Robert James.
"She could be right back in court with this next week, if she wants," he said.
The ruling comes as McAfee is also considering a bid by defendants to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis removed from the case. Defendants have alleged that Willis has a conflict of interest because of her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
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