A Fulton County judge dismissed three charges in the sprawling Georgia election subversion case, including two charges against former President Donald Trump, CNN reports.
Judge Scott McAfee ruled to drop one count of filing false documents and one count of conspiring to file false documents, both related to the Trump campaign’s efforts to put forward a slate of fake Republican electors in Georgia. Trump was only named in the conspiracy count.
McAfee also dismissed a separate charge of filing false documents, also facing Trump, related to untrue statements about voter fraud included in a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign in December 2020.
Trump’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, celebrated the ruling as a victory.
“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again,” Sadow stated. “The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed.”
The dismissal only partially affects former Trump lawyer John Eastman and Georgia state Senator Shawn Still, who were involved in the 2020 fake electors plot. Their cases are not currently paused.
This ruling comes amid a larger battle over the legitimacy of the indictment itself. Trump and most of his co-defendants are seeking to have an appeals court disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from overseeing the case. This has led to a pause in their cases before Judge McAfee, who presides over the lower court. However, Eastman and Still have chosen to proceed with their cases in the lower court rather than join the appeal.
Fulton County District Attorney Willis’s office declined to comment on the ruling.
McAfee’s decision comes after he previously dismissed three other charges against Trump in March. The indictment against Trump, originally secured last summer, contains 13 counts relating to his attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat in Georgia.
