This week, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney rejected an attempt by 11 individuals who signed on as electors for Trump from Georgia after the 2020 presidential election — despite Biden’s win in the state — to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from continuing her investigation of the group.
Willis is investigating the essentially faked electoral votes amid a broader probe into pro-Trump election meddling in Georgia in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race. In that investigation, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani was recently informed he is a target, meaning criminal charges are possible. (Rudy was involved in assembling the faked electoral votes, and he also repeatedly made false statements about the 2020 elections to Georgia state legislators.) As for the 11 wannabe Trump electors who lost in Georgia this week, McBurney wasn’t impressed. His rejection of the push to disqualify Willis means her attempt at getting these Trump supporters to sit for grand jury testimony was also upheld, it rather clearly seems.
“Contrary to the alternate electors’ unavailing analogizing, this is not a basketball game or a closed military tribunal,” McBurney said this week. “It is a public investigation into possible electoral wrongdoing. This process is inherently “political” in the simple and unremarkable sense that politicians and leaders of a specific political party are alleged to have undertaken efforts to defeat the will of the Georgia electorate. A prosecutor who pursues such a case is not automatically biased and partisan — and subject to disqualification — because of the common political affiliations of the subjects (and targets) of the investigation. And most certainly it is not a legal, ethical, or even sensical requirement that the prosecutor share that political affiliation.”
“Until the eleven alternate electors can do more than parrot back language from the Court’s Order addressing the profound conflict that the District Attorney faced with investigating Senator Jones as if it applies to their readily distinguishable situations, they should refrain from further petitions for disqualification,” he added. McBurney disqualified Willis from continuing her scrutiny of state Sen. Burt Jones (R-Ga.) because she hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic contender running against him in this year’s race for Georgia’s lieutenant governorship. Previously, the news also emerged all of the individuals who signed on as fake electors for Trump in Georgia were targets of Willis’s probe, although Jones’s standing is now different.
McBurney rejected the push from these 11 Trump-supporting individuals for disqualifying Willis after already rejecting it a first time alongside his original decision to disqualify the DA from continuing to investigate Jones. The group asked for reconsideration. The “alternate electors have provided no evidence that the District Attorney (or any member of her staff) has done anything that suggests a possible political motivation for investigating them — beyond the banal observation that they are active Republicans and the District Attorney is not,” McBurney added in his new order. It’s not immediately clear whether any of the fake electors have testified before the special grand jury since the detail emerged that they are all now targets in the probe.
Rejected: A Fulton County judge issued a sharply worded order that denied the attempt by 11 fake Georgia Republican electors to disqualify prosecutors from seeking potential criminal charges against them. #gapol pic.twitter.com/22GWaASyA2
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) August 25, 2022
