Fulton County DA asks court to reinstate several election charges against Trump

The Fulton County district attorney who charged former President Donald Trump with election interference in Georgia has asked an appeals court to reinstate a number of charges against Trump and his co-defendants that were tossed out by the trial court judge earlier this year.

District Attorney Fani Willis, in a filing to the Georgia Court of Appeals, argued that Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee "erred" in March when he quashed six of the counts in the indictment, specifically relating to the charge of Solicitation of Violation of Oath by a public officer.

In his March ruling, McAfee wrote that the indictment had "failed to allege sufficient detail" in exactly what part of the oath the defendants were allegedly trying to get public officials to violate. He said the "lack of detail concerning an essential legal element" was "fatal," and tossed out the charge.

The ruling removed three of the charges Trump was facing in the case, reducing the original 13 counts to 10. Judge McAfee later tossed two more counts against Trump, reducing the number to eight.

Willis, in her new court filing, pushed back on the judge's ruling, arguing that the indictment "more than sufficiently" included those details and called for the charges to be reinstated.

"The indictment included an abundance of context and factual allegations about the solicitations at issue, including when the requests were made, to whom the requests were made, and the manner in which the requests were made," Willis' filing stated.

"When read as a whole, the indictment provided an extremely clear picture of the acts committed by Cross-Appellees," said the filing.

The filing asks the appeals court to reverse McAfee's order and reinstate three charges.

Trump and 18 others pleaded not guilty last year to all charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. Four defendants subsequently took plea deals in exchange for agreeing to testify against other defendants.

After Judge McAfee declined to disqualify Willis from the case due to a "significant appearance of impropriety" stemming from a romantic relationship between her and a prosecutor on her staff, the Georgia Court of Appeals scheduled oral arguments in Trump's appeal of that decision for Dec. 5, pushing the case past the November election.