A judge in Fulton County, Georgia, has upheld a series of criminal charges brought by local district attorney Fani Willis against pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, for whom jury selection is slated to start within mere days.
The defendants had challenged elements to Willis’ case including her allegations of racketeering, which is a form of criminal conspiracy. A lawyer for Chesebro contended that neither ostensibly required financial gain nor threats of physical harm — again something allegedly needed for charges — were seen, though former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss did face physical threats amid this matter. In any regard, Judge Scott McAfee rejected that interpretation of the underlying legal standards, which had been already applied more broadly by legislators in the state themselves, and he found nothing to spur a departure.
As has come up before, McAfee also found that some of the arguments from defendants were better left to the trial, which will feature only Powell and Chesebro, with the remaining other defendants whose cases are active facing juries later. “A trial court has no authority, absent stipulation from both parties, to add facts not appearing on the face of the indictment and wade into a pretrial consideration of the evidence,” McAfee said in the meantime, as highlighted by The Hill. The same publication said that Powell and Chesebro still had an active challenge to their charges under the federal Constitution, though precedent obviously suggested they wouldn’t be successful there.
Other notable wins for Willis have been the rejections by a federal judge of the prospect of moving the charges against various individual defendants to federal court, where — should the judge have accepted the argument potentially spurring such a change that the challenged behavior was within the bounds of federal responsibilities — subsequent dismissals could’ve loomed. Those who so far unsuccessfully sought such a move ranged from Mark Meadows to several individuals who signed on as sham Georgia electors for Trump.
