Supreme Court’s Immunity Ruling Adds Major Hurdle for Georgia Trump Case
The New York Times
Determining which of the alleged acts that Donald Trump is being prosecuted for in the state were official conduct, and which were not, could delay the case for months.
The Supreme Court’s momentous ruling Monday on presidential immunity will reshape the prosecution of Donald J. Trump in Georgia.
But not any time soon.
The election interference case against Mr. Trump and 14 of his allies is largely frozen in place while the Georgia Court of Appeals considers whether to disqualify Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney leading the prosecution. Earlier this year, Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court allowed Ms. Willis to keep the case after revelations that she had a romantic relationship with the lawyer she hired to manage it.
But the appeal of that ruling is likely to take at least several months, and the efforts by Mr. Trump and other defendants to get Ms. Willis removed from the case may not ultimately be decided until early next year.
Once that is resolved, the Supreme Court’s finding that presidents are immune from prosecution over official actions will be sharply felt in the Georgia case, where it will inform Judge McAfee’s own eventual ruling on a Trump motion seeking immunity from the state prosecution. Mr. Trump’s legal team in Georgia filed the immunity motion in January, but all sides had been awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling for guidance.
Judge McAfee will now have to sort out which of the alleged actions that Mr. Trump is being prosecuted for count as official conduct and which count as unofficial under the new guidelines laid out by the high court. A federal judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, will have to do the same sorting for a parallel federal election interference case.
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