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Judge Scott McAfee—who is presiding over the sprawling racketeering case in Georgia involving Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and 17 others (four of whom have pled guilty already)—yesterday threw out six of the 41 charges as being overly broad. However, he told the prosecutors they could resubmit with more focused charges if they wished. Three of the charges related to Trump, so now he has to deal with only 10 charges in Georgia and 88 in all, at least for the time being. That's... quite the number for him.
Some of the dropped charges related to the fake-elector scheme in Georgia. Some of the defendants were charged with pressuring the legislature to appoint fake electors. McAfee believes there is little doubt that they did this, but says the indictment is not specific enough about exactly which law that action violates. Also, he wants to know more specifically which statute or constitutional provision Trump violated when he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 more votes. McAfee ruled that the lack of specific information hinders the defendants in preparing their cases. The judge will allow the prosecution to submit a superseding indictment or appeal his decision, but either action could delay the case significantly, so it probably won't go to trial this year if they do. However, the judge did not throw out the core allegation of conspiracy, so even without these six charges, the case could go forward as is.
Georgia law requires indictments to be very specific, along with dismissal of charges that contain any ambiguity. McAfee is a former federal prosecutor and is not hostile to prosecutors in general. He just said that he is applying Georgia law as it stands now and six of the charges are not specific enough about precisely which statute(s) were violated.
McAfee also said that a ruling on whether Fulton County DA Fani Willis must be removed from the case will be forthcoming later this week. That almost surely means that he has made a decision and is just tinkering with the wording of his ruling. (V)