Georgia Lawfare Crumbles: Another Blow to Fani Willis’ Trump Prosecution

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by Hans von Spakovsky

The second attempted assassination of Donald Trump over the weekend came just after the dismissal by a Georgia judge of more lawfare charges against the former president and other defendants in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ partisan prosecution.

But on Friday, two days before Sunday’s second shocking attempt to kill Trump, another dismissal occurred. This time, the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia threw out charges Willis wanted to file against the state’s lieutenant governor over the same actions that formed the basis of her prosecution of other so-called fake electors favoring Trump.

This second dismissal, by a separate, independent prosecutor, demonstrates why  Willis’ remaining charges against the other alternate, contingent electors and their lawyers should be thrown out of court.

The issue of whether Willis may continue her prosecution of any of the defendants is currently before the Georgia Court of Appeals, which set oral arguments for Dec. 3, a month after the presidential election.

The defendants appealed the decision of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee regarding their misconduct claim against Willis and her lover, Nathan Wade, whom she hired as special prosecutor against Trump.

McAfee ruled that the prosecution could continue as long as either Willis or Wade removed themselves from the case. Wade then bowed out, but the defendants are arguing that both of them should have been thrown off the case.

On Sept. 12, McAfee issued an order granting a motion to dismiss three of the remaining charges against Trump and other defendants in the Georgia case. The judge’s dismissal of two charges against Trump and one against other defendants comes on top of his ruling in March dismissing six other counts, including three against Trump. This leaves eight of the original 13 charges against Trump.

Notice a pattern here? Drip, drip, drip—drop, drop, drop.

The basis of McAfee’s latest order is the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Article VI, Clause 2 provides that the “Constitution, and the Laws of the United States … shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

In other words, the federal Constitution and federal laws always override state constitutions and state law. Not only has that principle been established in the courts, but we also fought the Civil War to uphold it.

McAfee applied the supremacy clause and an 1890 Supreme Court decision, In re Loner, to three charges in Willis’ indictment—counts 14, 15, and 27. All three of these counts, two of which named Trump among other defendants, accused them of violating Georgia law by filing false documents in a federal court case, Trump v. Kempthat the Trump campaign filed contesting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Willis’ original indictment even claimed a violation of state law was committed by the filing of the “Verified Complaint for Emergency Injunctive and Declaratory Relief” in federal court in Atlanta.

But in his 22-page opinion, McAfee points to the Loner decision, in which the Supreme Court held that “the power of punishing a witness for testifying falsely in a judicial proceeding belongs peculiarly to the government in whose tribunals that proceeding is had.”

Willis, an elected county prosecutor, was trying to prosecute Trump and the other defendants for actions taking place in a federal court, over which she has no legal authority whatsoever. If the federal court believes some type of fraudulent activity took place, it’s up to the court to police (or for federal prosecutors to prosecute) it, not some local prosecutor.

McAfee makes a profound observation—that the “underlying policy endorsed by the [Supreme] Court [in Loner] is to prevent a state’s prosecution of an individual for perjury in a federal tribunal where such a prosecution was instigated by ‘local passion or prejudice.’”

Local passion or prejudice! Sounds like the Supreme Court was talking directly about Willis some 134 years ago. Oh, and by the way, that 1890 case involved locals in Virginia going after a witness in a contested congressional election. Sound familiar?

McAfee’s decision is good news for Trump and other defendants such as lawyer John Eastman. But when one looks at the other dismissal that occurred last week, it’s not hard to imagine that a Georgia court also might dismiss the remaining charges in Willis’ indictment of Trump and the others.

This is particularly so when one takes into account the presidential immunity decision rendered recently by the Supreme Court in Trump v. U.S and the First Amendment problems with many of Willis’ charges.

Burt Jones, a former state senator who has been Georgia’s lieutenant governor since last year, was one of Willis’ targets because he was one of the alternate, contingent electors selected for Trump. The votes of those electors would be in place if a court or the Legislature agreed with Trump that the presidential election had been wrongly decided in Georgia.

But Willis was recused because of her ethically dubious conduct in targeting Jones while at the same time helping his Democrat opponent in the lieutenant governor’s race.

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This is another means the left uses to incite violence against Trump. Morons like Fani file bogus, worthless, unjustified charges against Trump and then when he gets them thrown out, as they should be and should never have been filed, the left makes it out like Trump is someone evading “justice”. In fact, he is PRESERVING justice by proving, at a high and unnecessary financial cost to himself, the Constitution protects the citizens against false imprisonment.

James, Bragg and Willis should all be prosecuted, found guilty, disbarred and imprisoned.