The Patriot Post® · The Clownish Georgia Case Gets Tossed

Admit it: With everything going on in the world, you just plain forgot about Fani Willis.

I certainly did. I mean, with Donald Trump deporting criminal illegal aliens and making our cities safer while at the same time hammering out peace deals around the world and working to undo the grievous economic damage wrought by the Autopen Presidency, we can be excused for having lost track of a measly 41-count criminal indictment against Trump and his team in Georgia.

Until last Wednesday, that is, when a Georgia judge finally put that contemptible case out of its misery in the form of a one-paragraph ruling. “The citizens of Georgia,” wrote Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, “are not served by pursuing this case in full for another five to ten years.”

Recall that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis — likely in coordination with a team of leftist lawfarists bent on destroying the president both personally and politically — brought a RICO case against Trump and 18 co-defendants in the summer of 2023 for their entirely legal efforts to protest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. You remember that election: It was the rigged one in which basement-bound Joe Biden somehow got more population-adjusted votes than rockstar Barack Obama got in 2008.

RICO, which stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, refers to a 1970 federal law that was created for the purpose of prosecuting organized crime. So, according to Willis and her crew, the efforts of Donald Trump and his legal team to correct what they viewed as electoral malfeasance were akin to the bloody business of the New York Mafia’s Five Families — you know, like writing off an entire Steinway even when you only use one string. That sort of thing.

In short, Trump’s political enemies were just MSU — and I don’t mean Mississippi State University.

The Georgia case was always a dog. With ticks. And fleas. And the mange. Just how awful was the Georgia case? This awful: After the disgraced and incompetent Willis got the heave-ho for having carried on an affair with the unqualified dolt she’d paid lavishly to be her lead prosecutor, the case languished in a sort of prosecutorial purgatory. Ultimately, the task of replacing Willis fell to Peter Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia. But when Skandalakis asked for a volunteer, not a single soul stepped forward. Not a single prosecutor was interested in picking up where Willis left off. And so, Skandalakis appointed himself. Talk about taking one for the team. Imagine coming home to the missus and saying, Honey, you’ll never guess what I did today!

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s how constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley sees it:

Skandalakis shredded the case against Trump and the other defendants, noting that it was premised on biased assumptions about individuals’ motivations. For example, he criticized Willis for charging former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and others over their statements to the Georgia Legislature. He observed that such charges “would have a chilling effect on witnesses,” and raised “serious constitutional questions” concerning free speech. …

Much of the media responded to the news with a shrug and moved on after years of fawning over Willis and running misleading stories on the legal merits. Pundits who appeared nightly to support the prosecution as manifestly well-founded were nowhere to be found.

Even Trump’s critics on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal figured enough was enough: “Mr. Skandalakis delivered the coup de grâce Wednesday, moving to drop the case ‘to serve the interests of justice and promote judicial finality.’ His analysis of the allegations hits the right notes: The call with Mr. Raffensperger could be interpreted as Mr. Trump ‘genuinely believing fraud had occurred.’ The so-called fake electors ‘lacked criminal intent.’ Much of the conduct was outside Georgia. There are unresolved questions of Presidential immunity.” (As an aside, whenever someone uses the term “fake electors,” gently correct them. Trump’s team assembled a slate of alternate electors in contested states, just as had been done twice before during presidential elections — both times by Democrats, and neither time with criminal consequence.)

Same with former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy at National Review, who concludes, “The case against Trump and his 18 co-defendants should never have been brought, certainly in the manner charged. Now, it’s over.”

With the defenestration of the Georgia case, three of the four criminal cases against Trump are now kaput. My only (rhetorical) question is: What’s taking them so long in New York?