Wearing red, white and blue at Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail two years ago, Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to have his face immortalized in a mugshot. But Georgia’s election interference case against Trump was dropped on Nov. 26. Now, the county’s taxpayers could be on the hook for millions of dollars in the billionaire president’s legal fees.
Earlier this year, Georgia’s Republican-led legislature approved an unusual measure, SB 244, that allows defendants to seek reimbursement for their attorneys fees if their criminal cases are dismissed due to a prosecutor’s improper conduct. Lawmakers reportedly had Trump’s case in mind in enacting the legislation.
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Even then, the historic election interference case against Trump was in trouble. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis — whose office brought racketeering charges against Trump and 18 co-defendants — was removed after a panel of appeals court judges found that her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she appointed to oversee the case, created an “appearance of impropriety.”
A judge dismissed the case at the request of Pete Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, who took over for Willis when she was disqualified.
“Given the complexity of the legal issues at hand — ranging from constitutional questions and the Supremacy Clause to immunity, jurisdiction, venue, speedy-trial concerns, and access to federal records — and even assuming each of these issues were resolved in the State’s favor, bringing this case before a jury in 2029, 2030, or even 2031 would be nothing short of a remarkable feat,” Skandalakis wrote. Continuing to pursue the case, he said, would be “illogical and unduly burdensome and costly for the State and for Fulton County.”
He did not mention the potential costs from SB 244.
DA ‘deserves to have to pay up’
Requiring the losing side in a civil case to pay attorneys’ fees is not unusual. In criminal cases, it is rare.
But more than a dozen Republican legislators who are allies of Trump sponsored a bill to do just that in cases like the president’s. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed the bill into law after it passed mostly along party lines.
Trump then tapped the chief sponsor, Brandon Beach, a Republican from suburban Atlanta, to be Treasurer of the United States.
Beach told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Willis “deserves to have to pay up on this.”
Trump’s legal fees for the Georgia case — one of four criminal indictments he faced after leaving office in 2021 — are expected to exceed $5.5 million over the past four years. The costs to all 18 defendants could total $10 million or more.
Fulton County taxpayers will likely need to cough up that money as a substantial part of the $40.4 million annual budget for the district attorney’s office.
The district attorney’s office did not respond to Straight Arrow News’ request for comment.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee will decide how much each defendant will be reimbursed.
It’s an ignominious end for a case that once was considered the greatest threat to Trump’s freedom.
“Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis received some difficult but not entirely unsurprising news over the Thanksgiving holiday: her sweeping election subversion case against President Donald Trump and several allies was officially dismissed, ending one of the most bizarre legal chapters in Georgia history,” Niles Francis wrote for the Georgia Recorder. “Willis, an elected Democrat, quickly emerged as one of the president’s most prominent political foes after the 2020 election, when her office launched an investigation into Trump’s attempts to stay in power following his narrow defeat.”
