Georgia
Appeals Court Upholds Dismissal of Six Counts in Georgia Election Subversion Case
The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to dismiss six counts of an indictment charging President Donald Trump and others for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
On Jan. 17, a three-judge panel unanimously upheld the lower court’s decision, writing “we find that the indictment fails to include enough detail to sufficiently apprise the defendants of what they must be prepared to meet so that they can intelligently prepare their defenses.”
The 98-page indictment was returned in August 2023 in Fulton County, Georgia, after more than two years of investigation. It named 41 counts and 18 defendants, including Trump’s close advisors Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and John Eastman. The indictment charged Trump with 13 counts.
The charges in Fulton County include the now infamous call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) asking him to find more than 11,000 votes — just enough to overturn the election results. The indictment also details harassment and intimidation of election workers, the unlawful breach of election equipment by members of the enterprise, the fake electors scheme and an effort to cover up the conspiracy.
Trump, Giuliani, Meadows, Eastman and two others challenged six counts of the indictment, arguing that the charges were too broad.
The counts deal with soliciting others to engage in conduct that willfully and intentionally violates a Georgia public official’s oath of office, which includes a promise to uphold the state and national constitutions. In particular, the counts reference conversations with Georgia legislators and Raffensperger in which the defendants asked them to change election results, decertify the election, and call a special session of the state legislature to unlawfully appoint electors.
In March 2024, a Fulton County judge agreed with the defendants that the six counts were too generic, writing that the U.S. Constitution and Georgia Constitution contain hundreds of clauses, and that “the Defendants could have violated the Constitutions and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways.”
After an appeal from state prosecutors, a court of appeals held firm with this decision.
Trump remains charged with 10 counts, though it is unlikely that a criminal prosecution will move forward now that he has been sworn in for a second term.
Read the opinion here.
Learn more about the case here.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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