The 2020 election interference case is gone, but it can’t be forgotten
Faster than you can say, “Find me the votes,” the sprawling 2020 election interference case against President Donald Trump and 14 of his 18 co-defendants in Georgia dissolved into thin air last week when prosecutor Pete Skandalakis said there was no reasonable way to keep the sputtering case going.
But the end of the case should not be the end of the story. Because as much as Skandalakis showed why continuing to prosecute Trump and his co-conspirators doesn’t make sense, he also resurfaced actions by several Trump allies that should never be allowed to happen again in the state of Georgia, no matter which election we’re talking about.
The decision itself is good news for many swept up in the case, especially the Georgia Republicans who agreed to be alternate electors for Trump, like Gwinnett state Sen. Shawn Still. Skandalakis notes that the electors were all acting on legal advice from the GOP and were told in their meeting that their electoral votes would only be used if Trump won his Georgia appeals, which he eventually lost. The memo essentially clears their names after a yearslong legal odyssey.
Even Trump, in Scandalakis’ opinion, could have been within his rights for the actions he was charged with, including his call to Raffensperger looking for votes to reverse the election. Trump’s intent behind the call is open to interpretation, so the benefit of the doubt should go to the president, he wrote. For the other charges against Trump, waiting until he is out of office in 2029 to continue the process against him, eight years after the events in question, is not feasible.
But other people and circumstances in Skandalakis’ memo did not get the same favorable judgment. Three defendants — Rudy Giuliani, Ray Stallings Smith III and Robert Cheeley — “made statements that were wrong and baseless” in their testimony to the Georgia Senate, he noted, as they tried to convince senators to call a special session of the Legislature to overturn the election results.
But because the men made their false claims in unsworn testimony, Skandalakis passed on prosecuting them, too.
He also passed on further prosecution for the Trump allies behind the breach of Coffee County’s election equipment in the weeks after the election. Video evidence showed Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Scott Hall, a vocal election skeptic, being escorted into Coffee County’s election office by a local Republican who was also an elections official.
A 400-page Georgia Bureau of Investigation report showed that Powell and Hall also brought technicians from a private security firm to copy vast amounts of data from Coffee County’s voting machines, including county election files, state election software and memory cards with stored votes.
Because Hall and Powell both pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanor conspiracy charges in 2023, Skandalakis reasoned that prosecuting the people who helped them access Coffee County’s records would not be a good use of state resources, especially since Hall and Powell would not be reliable witnesses against them. But he never challenged the facts or seriousness of the election data breach.
But Skandalakis saved his strongest words for the portion of the case involving Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman, whom he called “a truly sympathetic figure.” Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, were the two poll workers seen on video footage processing election night ballots at State Farm Arena, which Giuliani, Trump and others later falsely claimed was the “smoking gun” proving that the election had been stolen from the president.
Once Giuliani played the video of the women in a state Senate hearing, Trump posted it to his 88 million social media followers. During his call to Raffensperger, Trump proceeded to mention Freeman 18 times, calling her a “hustler” and “professional vote scammer.”
As soon as their names were public, Freeman and Moss came under immediate fire from Trump supporters. One woman, Trevian Kutti, traveled to Atlanta to knock on Freeman’s door to convince her to confess to rigging the vote against Trump or suffer the consequences, including jail. Worried for their safety, the FBI advised Freeman and Moss to go into hiding.
But because Freeman was living in Cobb County at the time of the harassment, Skandalakis reasoned that Kutti and others should be charged in Cobb County, instead of Fulton County, where the Trump case began. The charges in that portion of the case were dismissed, too.
As soon as Skandalakis’ decision was made public, Kutti posted her mugshot to social media with a banner that read, “CASE DISMISSED.” She captioned the photo, “TURN UP THE LIGHTS!!!! SHOUT OUT PRESIDENT TRUMP. I WOULD DO IT ALL AGAIN!”
And that’s where the trouble with Skandalakis’ decision lies. Although it’s no surprise that he could not find another prosecutor to take the massive case, nor could he take the case himself, we shouldn’t all walk away from the events of 2020 and 2021, deciding that there was nothing to see here.
Far from the total exoneration that Trump describes the decision as, Skandalakis’ report acknowledges both the weaknesses in the Fulton County case, as well as the broad misbehavior by several Trump allies following the 2020 elections.
If Georgians want to trust that the chaotic effort to overturn an election in the state never happens again, there is still work for courts and even lawmakers to do in the future. If there’s not a law to prevent everything that happened here, there certainly ought to be.
About the Author
Patricia Murphy is the AJC's senior political columnist. She was previously a nationally syndicated columnist for CQ Roll Call, national political reporter for the Daily Beast and Politics Daily, and wrote for The Washington Post and Garden & Gun. She graduated from Vanderbilt and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
