Georgia judge dismisses two charges against Trump, court documents show

In Georgia’s 2020 election interference lawsuit against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and one other count against the former president’s aides, a judge dismissed two criminal allegations on Thursday.

State prosecutors were accused of filing false documents in federal court, but Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee ruled that they lacked the power to pursue those accusations.

Eight charges against Trump were among the remaining charges that McAfee permitted to proceed. For their part, Trump and fourteen accomplices have entered not guilty pleas to counts of racketeering and other offenses relating to what the prosecution claims was a plot to reverse Trump’s narrow loss in Georgia during the 2020 election.

The case was placed on hold in June while a Georgia appeals court deliberated whether to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as the primary prosecutor due to suspected wrongdoing involving a romantic relationship she had with a former leading deputy.

The case won’t advance before Trump’s election against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris on November 5th, as the appeals court’s planned arguments are in December.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that presidents enjoy extensive protection from criminal prosecution has also significantly slowed down a separate federal case that Trump was involved in over his attempts to reverse his election setback on a national level.

The ruling on Thursday is related to suspicions that Trump and his supporters put together a group of fictitious presidential electors and launched a civil action contesting the election results that contained bogus information.

As a result of the decision, five of the first 13 criminal charges against Trump in the indictment that was acquired last year have been dismissed. Three of the six additional allegations that McAfee rejected in March were directed at Trump.

Steve Sadow, the attorney for Trump, stated in a statement that the decision demonstrated that Trump and his legal team “have prevailed once again.”

A request for comment from Willis’s office was not immediately answered by a representative.

McAfee maintained the main accusation in the case, racketeering, which has been made against each of the defendants, in a different ruling on Thursday.