When President Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, there was an aura of invincibility around him. For three years, he’d fended off almost all of the legal challenges he faced, successfully delaying multiple federal criminal cases and avoiding jail time in New York. The Supreme Court had granted him a seeming blank check for any official acts he’d taken, or would take, in the White House.
The case suddenly resurfaced as one of several legal threats to Trump’s allies that could keep his attempted power grab in the spotlight during his second term.
The only charges left were those from a sprawling 2023 indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, in which Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators were accused of crimes that included racketeering and numerous counts of conspiracy around the 2020 election. The indictment said the goal was to have Trump declared the winner in Georgia, even though he lost.
Thanks in no small part to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ hubris, that case was on ice, and because it was a state and not a federal case, it remained out of Trump’s power to influence. But last week, the case suddenly resurfaced as one of several legal threats to Trump’s allies that could keep his attempted power grab in the spotlight during his second term.
The case Willis brought against Trump always seemed to be the most threatening of the four criminal cases filed against him after he was out of office. But then Willis — who eventually admitted to a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she’d appointed to lead the investigation — was ultimately removed from the case for the “appearance of impropriety.”
The frozen case suddenly thawed on Friday when Peter Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, announced that he’d be taking over the case from Willis. The presiding judge had given the council the task of finding a new prosecutor by Friday or dropping the case altogether. Skandalakis, who said in a statement that he took on the role himself after several prosecutors declined, did not indicate whether he’ll be moving forward with the case anytime soon. But his not letting it be dismissed on a technicality seems encouraging.
While Trump himself may be inoculated from prosecution while in office, the same can’t be said about his co-defendants While Trump himself may be inoculated from prosecution while in office, the same can’t be said about his co-defendants in the massive anti-racketeering case. The pardon he signed earlier this month doesn’t automatically protect those alleged to have violated state law by trying to funnel Georgia’s electoral votes to Trump. And a curious development across the country speaks to how the case against them could still be a problem for the president. Georgia wasn’t the only swing state where Republican electors signed off on fake documents intended to get Congress to throw the election to Trump. Criminal cases were filed in four other states: Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan. The Michigan case was tossed out in September by a state district judge. And an Arizona judge’s decision to send the case back to a grand jury will stand if state Attorney General Kris Mayes doesn’t appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court within the next week. But the Nevada Supreme Court ruled last week that the case against the fake electors could continue in Clark County, preventing Attorney General Aaron Ford from having to restart the process. And in Wisconsin, while the fake electors themselves weren’t charged, the case continues against the three members of the Trump campaign accused of helping devise and execute the plot. Then came the announcement on Friday that the Georgia case, at least for now, is still alive. There’s hope yet that there will be accountability for the men and women who attempted to subvert American democracy. There’s a chance that the pardon Trump recently signed shielding those in the fake electors scheme from federal charges could be used to try to dismiss at least some of the state charges against those fake electors. But even if that proves successful, other parts of the indictment would remain against several of the alleged co-conspirators in Georgia, putting the spotlight back on how the president sought to ignore the will of the voters to remain in power.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
