On Wednesday, a judge in the Georgia criminal election interference case against former President Donald Trump and five others dismissed six counts. The judge ruled that the indictment didn’t adequately clarify the grounds for those charges.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote Wednesday in an order that 6 of the charges in the indictment must be quashed, including three against Trump.
However, Judge Scott McAfee’s order leaves other criminal charges against Trump and the defendants intact. The dismissed counts had accused them of soliciting the violation of oath by a public officer.
The charges were connected to the defendants’ attempts to persuade members of Georgia’s legislature and the secretary of state to discredit President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the state’s 2020 election.
McAfee agreed with defense lawyers for Trump and the other defendants who argued that the indictment lacked specific details regarding the oaths allegedly violated. He noted that the language accusing the defendants of soliciting elected officials to breach their oaths to the U.S. and Georgia constitutions was too general, leading to the dismissal of the charges.
“On its own, the United States Constitution contains hundreds of clauses, any one of which can be the subject of a lifetime’s study,” McAfee wrote.
