Trump case was a steaming mess, but a lost opportunity for justice
In the end, Pete Skandalakis, the special prosecutor who got stuck with the case nobody wanted, smothered it with a pillow and tossed it in the dustbin of history.
He heads the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia and ended up with the criminal racketeering case against President Donald Trump because of the hubris of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. She had been disqualified from the case after hiring her boyfriend and paying him handsomely to lead the investigation.
Skandalakis determined that the sprawling racketeering case that originally had 19 defendants, including then-former President Trump, would have been better handled as a federal case.
And, with the prosecution of Trump not possible until he leaves office in 2029, Skandalakis wrote: “In my professional judgment, the citizens of Georgia are not served by pursuing this case in full for another five to 10 years.”
Skandalakis ended up with the case after he was unable to dump it off on any other DA in the state. So, if anyone was left to prosecute a case that generated 101 banker boxes of files and 8 terabytes of digital info, it would be his tiny office.
(AI says a terabyte is about 250,000 photos, 500 hours of high-def video or 6.5 million document pages).
Georgia dismisses case against Trump
The Decision: Georgia dismisses Trump election case, ending his last criminal prosecution
Legal fees: Case dismissal means Fulton County could pay Trump millions
Case collapses: Georgia election case, once seen as strongest against Trump, hits the skids
Timeline: How we got here
The defense: Meet the lawyer who derailed Georgia’s prosecution of Donald Trump
Federal pardons: Trump pardons 18 co-defendants in Georgia election case
Something tells me Pete, a forthright fellow whom I’ve known for 30 years, was unable to comb through all those files. He just figured this case was ultimately a loser and not worth the time, energy and money it would cost.
“I think he saw the problems in a risk/reward kind of way,” said Danny Porter, the former DA in Gwinnett County who has helped Skandalakis on cases before. “He made a practical decision to close the book on it.”
“I think (Trump) wore everybody out, which seems to be his strategy, and which seems to be a successful one,” said Porter, a Republican. “To see Trump gloat over (the decision) personally bothers me.”
The case grew out of Trump’s infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the 2020 election. During the hourlong call, Trump badgered Raffy to “find” 11,780 votes to allow him to win the state.
Again, DA Willis’ case was a conspiracy by Trump and his minions to steal an election he clearly lost. That’s as bad as it gets for a pol.
As to the core allegation, Skandalakis says “reasonable minds could differ as to how to interpret the call.”
He notes one side could argue “Trump, without explicitly stating it, is instructing the Secretary of State to fictitiously or fraudulently produce enough votes to secure a victory.”
The other side could contend that Trump, “genuinely believing fraud had occurred,” was asking Raffensperger to investigate further.
But I think Pete’s being a bit too kind in his assessment of Trump’s actions and intentions.
In the call, Trump blathers about all sorts of imaginary numbers and conspiracies — like dead voters, out-of-state voters and fake ballots.
Evidence later showed that Trump had been told, in no uncertain terms, he lost.
In the call, Trump told Raffensperger that fraudulent ballots will be found and “it’s more illegal for you than it is for them, because you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s just, you know, that’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. ... That’s, that’s a big risk to you and to Ryan (Germany, the secretary’s legal counsel).”
That sure had ominous overtones, kind of like Tony Soprano saying: “It’d be a shame if something happened to your little restaurant here.”
Raffensperger said he took it as such.
“I felt then — and I still believe today — that this was a threat,” Raffensperger later wrote in his 2021 book, “Integrity Counts.”
“President Trump is using what he believes is the power of his position to threaten Ryan and me with prosecution if we don’t do what he tells us to do,” he wrote. “It was nothing but an attempt at manipulation.”
I’d say Raffensperger, who is now running for governor, is one of the “reasonable minds” Skandalakis was referring to.
One could assume that if DA Willis tailored a more direct criminal prosecution at Trump and a smaller cadre of defendants — and brought it sooner than the summer of 2023 — she might have had a shot at getting Trump in court.
However, with 19 defendants and a case going in multiple directions (fake electors, digging into a voting machine in South Georgia, intimidation of election workers), Willis ended up fighting a war on many fronts.
“There were so many things stitched into it, the focus was lost,” Porter said.
In fact, it was the attorney of one of Trump’s minor co-defendants who dug up evidence of Willis hiring her boyfriend.
One of the cases that should have been before a jury was the harassment of Fulton election worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter, who were terrorized by people coming to Freeman’s house.
Skandalakis notes such a case would have been better prosecuted in Cobb County, where she lived.
I called former Gov. Roy Barnes, whom Willis asked to try the case. He turned her down.
“The case was triable,” he said. “What gets me is you had two different grand juries that said there was probable cause.”
He referenced the Trump phone call, saying: “In fraud cases, a lot of defendants will say, ‘I was just aggressively marketing,’ but the prosecutors will argue, ‘It was fraud.’
“That’s what you have juries for.”
After the case was dropped last week, the Teflon Don went online to bash Willis and note, in all caps, “THE 2020 ELECTION WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN.”
Same as it ever was.
About the Author
Bill Torpy, who writes about metro Atlanta for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, joined the newspaper in 1990.
