Lawfare Update: Fani Edition

Another shoe has dropped in the Lawfare v. Trump saga. Over 3 years ago, a partisan Democrat prosecutor in Georgia filed a grand criminal conspiracy case against Trump and 18 others. The object of the conspiracy was to criminally overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Weeks before the indictment, her hand-picked lead prosecutor spent days in D.C. taking instructions from the Biden Justice Department.

For reasons too salacious to describe, the prosecutor was kicked off the case. The executive director of an office called the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia was given the task of finding another Georgia prosecutor to take the case. All of them refused to touch it. Since the executive director was himself a career prosecutor, he assigned the case to himself. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, after spending a few weeks studying the case, he asked a judge for permission to dismiss the case. The judge signed the order within minutes. The case is over. Dead. No appeal.

His request to the judge included a 22-page memo summarizing his reasons for the request to dismiss. Some of the reasons were unrelated to the merits, in that it was just extremely impractical to proceed since everything would be frozen in limbo until Trump left office in January 2029. But, he also addressed the merits. The case was the ultimate nothing-burger.

Immediately after the 2020 election, Trump gathered together his staffers, advisers, and lawyers. He thought the election was stolen by the Democrats, and he wanted to undo the steal.

It is most important to note who attended the meeting and who did not. Lawyers who claimed to have experience and expertise in election law attended. Past or present military generals did not attend. Past or present spies and secret agents did not attend. People skilled in the criminal arts did not attend. To most prosecutors, including the one reviewing the case, this was a pretty strong indication that Trump intended to lawfully contest the election, not unlawfully.

Anyway, on the advice of the lawyers, a bunch of people did a bunch of things in a concerted effort to lawfully undo the steal. It was indeed a grand conspiracy to overturn the election. The problem is that nothing the co-conspirators did was illegal. Nothing. Asking judges to do something judges have the authority to do is not illegal. Asking local election officials to do something they have the authority to do is not illegal. Asking the vice president to do something he “might” have authority to do is not illegal. Making public accusations of Democrat election fraud (even if your evidence is far from conclusive) is not illegal. Trying to rally public opinion in your favor is not illegal.

The closest act to something improper was a single comment that Trump made in a group phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the presence of numerous staffers and lawyers from both sides. We know exactly what was said because the call was recorded. The call lasted 63 minutes. During the call, Trump asked the secretary of state to “find” 11,780 more votes, which would reverse the result. The word “find” arose in the context of the conversation about multiple clumps of ballots that were “found” during the counting process. Not a single participant in the phone call thought Trump was asking the secretary of state to do anything illegal. After the phone call, neither Raffensperger nor anyone else did anything illegal.

Per the 22-page memo, that one sentence in the hour-long group call filled with lawyers was the closest thing he could find that was arguably improper in the entire criminal complaint that accused Trump and 18 co-defendants of 41 nefarious acts.

Mr. Skandalakis, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia executive director, is not the first person to conclude there was no “there” anywhere in this case. Numerous independent legal experts called it garbage the day the case was filed. The mainstream press and the Democrats, however, said the complaint was devastating for Trump.

The elected prosecutor’s hand-picked lead attorney on this case had zero experience with such cases. He went to D.C. to learn how to do the job. Joe Biden’s Justice Department is directly responsible for this case. Their attack dog, Jack Smith, filed a separate federal conspiracy case making similar accusations. The federal case was, of course, dismissed when a new attorney general took office.

Besides Trump, 18 individuals who were either attorneys trying to lawfully represent their client or were non-attorneys doing what attorneys advised them to do were formally charged with serious felonies. Collectively, Trump and the 18 ran up attorney fees that exceeded 3 million dollars. But for the salacious misconduct of the elected Democrat prosecutor, this case would still be pending and the defense costs would still be rising.

G-Pub

Footnotes:
(1) Two defendants (one lawyer, one person hired by the lawyer) entered into plea bargains soon after the complaint was filed. They plead guilty to misdemeanors with no serious punishment and no impingement of their ability to continue in their professions. They agreed to testify against the other defendants and gave a sworn statement as to what they would say at trial. As Mr. Skandalakis pointed out, however, these “confessions” don’t admit to any crime being committed — by anyone, including themselves.

The dismissal of the case against the other defendants will not erase their guilty pleas. But, they received the bargain they sought. They saved thousands and thousands of dollars in lawyer fees.

(2) The Georgia State Legislature was so embarrassed by this case, they passed a law that would permit vindicated defendants the right to seek reimbursement of defense costs. Stay tuned.

(3) Final insult: the elected D.A., Fani Willis, was reelected. She is still the D.A. of Cobb County (Atlanta).