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      Judge dismisses two criminal counts against Trump in Georgia election case

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      Donald Trump had two counts tossed from his criminal case in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, after the presiding judge decided on Thursday they fell under the supremacy clause in the US constitution that bars state prosecutors from charging federal crimes.“The Supremacy Clause declares that state law must yield to federal law when the two conflict,” the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee wrote in his order.The judge decided that two charges against Trump and an additional count against several Trump allies, who were charged as co-defendants, should be struck. But he decided the remainder of the indictment – including the Rico racketeering charge – could remain.Trump now faces eight charges, down from 13 charges. Trump pleaded not guilty to the sprawling 2020 election interference case in Fulton county last year along with 18 other co-defendants. Four have since taken plea deals and agreed to testify against the other defendants.The charges that were dismissed against Trump – the filing of false documents and conspiring to file false documents – related to the Trump campaign’s gambit to submit fake elector certificates declaring Trump as the winner even though he had lost.The fake elector certificates were then sent to the National Archives ahead of the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021, which the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis charged as criminal forgery counts.“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again. The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed,” Trump’s lead lawyer, Steve Sadow, said in a statement.The 22-page order issued by McAfee comes as the fate of the case hangs in the balance ahead of the Georgia appeals court deciding whether Willis can continue with the case, following her alleged relationship with her deputy, Nathan Wade.McAfee declined to remove Willis from the case as long as Wade resigned to resolve the conflict of interest allegation, a decision that Trump’s lawyers have appealed.Trump’s attorneys continue to argue that Willis has a conflict of interest, but also argued that she should have been disqualified for comments she made about the case at a speech at Big Bethel AME church in downtown Atlanta. In the wake of revelations about her relationship with Wade, Willis attributed the legal attack to racist motivations.Separately on Thursday, McAfee rejected a motion from the former Trump lawyer John Eastman and Trump fake elector Shawn Still to toss the entire indictment on grounds that it relied on an overly broad interpretation of the Georgia state racketeering statute. More

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      Lawsuit seeking power to not certify Georgia elections is dismissed

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      A lawsuit arguing that county election board members in Georgia have the discretion to refuse to certify election results has been dismissed on a technicality, but the judge noted it could be refiled.Fulton county election board member Julie Adams filed a lawsuit in May asking a judge to declare that the county election board members’ duties “are discretionary, not ministerial, in nature”. At issue is a Georgia law that says the county officials “shall” certify results after engaging in a process to make sure they are accurate.Superior court judge Robert McBurney on Monday dismissed Adams’ lawsuit, saying that she had failed to name the correct party as a defendant. The Associated Press has reached out to Adams’ lawyers seeking comment on the ruling and asking if they intend to file a new complaint.Under Georgia law, the principle of sovereign immunity protects state and local governments from being sued unless they agree to it. But voters in 2020 approved an amendment to the state constitution to provide a limited waiver for claims where a party is asking a judge to make a declaration on the meaning of a law.That is what Adams was trying to do when she filed her suit against the board she sits on and the county elections director. But McBurney noted in his ruling that the requirements very plainly state that any such complaint must be brought against the state or local government.McBurney noted that Adams had amended her complaint and tried to recast her claims as being brought against Fulton county alone. But, he concluded, “that was too little, too late; the fatal pleading flaw cannot be undone.”However, McBurney noted, that does not mean this fight is necessarily over.“This action is done, but there can be another,” he wrote. Adams “can refile, name the correct party and we will pick up where we left off, likely with all the same lawyers and certainly with the same substantive arguments”. More

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      Georgia governor Brian Kemp weighs options on state election board problem

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      As Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp wrestles with what to do with a seemingly wayward state board of elections that is drawing national criticism for last-hour changes to the state’s election practices born of stop-the-steal election activism, the state attorney general declined to make his job any easier.Kemp asked Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, to render a legal opinion about the governor’s legal obligation to hold a hearing and potentially remove board members, in light of two ethics complaints filed against the board since a raucous hearing in July raised questions about the legality of the board’s actions. Three board members – Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston and Janelle King – have attempted to reopen investigation into the 2020 election, citing a finding of error in Fulton county and the continuation of lawsuits by election denialists.Repeated audits and investigations have found no error in tabulation large enough to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Nonetheless, the three board members have approved new rules giving local elections officials wider authority to make a “reasonable inquiry” into elections discrepancies. By leaving the term “reasonable” undefined, the change is setting off alarm bells among critics, who believe local elections officials with partisan intentions will cast doubt on the results if their candidate loses.Carr’s office earlier this year swatted back the board’s demand to reinvestigate the 2020 election in Fulton county. But it also declined last week to advise Kemp to convene a hearing under the state’s ethics law, because no “formal charges” had been filed for allegedly holding an illegal meeting in August to adopt new election rules.If the law required Kemp to remove board members, he could do so while claiming to Donald Trump-aligned partisans that his hands were tied. That’s no longer an option. If he does so now, voices on the hard right will rise to say that Kemp is, once again, facilitating victory for Democrats at their expense.In a state controlled by Republicans, Georgia’s elections board has become a contentious friction point between conventional conservatives like Kemp and Trump allies who continue to press claims of a stolen 2020 election.Trump praised the board members by name at a rally in Atlanta in August, while trashing Kemp for refraining to stop the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, from pursuing the election interference case against him.The board’s behavior puts Kemp in a political pickle. Trump and Kemp have made overtures in the past few weeks to mend the rift. Kemp endorsed Trump in a conversation with the Fox News host Sean Hannity last month, which Trump accepted graciously in a Truth Social posting. But Trump partisans remain deeply resentful of Kemp’s apparent inaction on Trump’s behalf.For Republicans, the conflict between Trump and Kemp is particularly toxic in an election year. But the board’s actions convey a plain impression of partisan interest, which is also toxic in an election year, as Democrats use the publicity around the election board’s plays to drive turnout.Even though a majority of Georgians are confident that the 2024 election will be held fairly, the partisan split is enormous. Only 9% of Republicans have confidence in a fair election, according to a poll administered by the University of Georgia in June.That has primary election implications for Kemp, who is widely expected to run for the US Senate against the Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2026. Kemp is the most popular Republican in the state – more so than Trump – but would face withering criticism for taking unilateral action against a Trump-oriented board.In the wake of the 2020 election, state lawmakers stripped the secretary of state and his office of some of their power over the state board of elections. The appointment of King, a conservative radio talkshow host, to the swing seat on the board earlier this year has given Trump partisans a 3-2 majority of the board.At its August meeting, the three members outside of Kemp’s orbit – King, Johnston and Jeffares – voted to demand that the state attorney general reinvestigate claims of irregularities in Fulton county’s election tabulation of 2020, threatening to hire outside counsel to investigate instead.Carr’s office responded, denying their demand and notifying them that the only lawyers the state board of elections has, by law, are at the attorney general’s office.Critics such as the Democratic party, who are filing complaints about the board’s actions, suggest that board’s goal is to delay certification in the event of an apparent Trump loss in order to bolster future claims of another stolen election.The complaint filed by the Democratic party of Georgia and Cathy Woolard, a former chairperson of the local Fulton county board of registration and elections, argues that the board “knowingly and willfully violated state law” by holding the August meeting without proper notice, “and have repeatedly disregarded the advice of the attorney general’s office, turning instead to outside parties for both legal counsel and the substance of proposed rules”.By doing so, the board had created an appearance of impropriety, the complaint alleges, noting how board members had received a standing ovation at a Trump rally and how Jeffares, had reportedly discussed a position in the Trump administration in public.The complaint invokes Georgia’s ethics law, which states that the governor is compelled to remove board members who violate the ethics code.The word “shall” limits the governor’s discretion. But Kemp wanted to know if the letter of complaint constituted “formal charges”.Staff attorneys from Carr’s office responded on Friday, telling Kemp that it did not.“‘Upon formal charges being filed’ does not mean that a citizen can simply submit information to the Governor and trigger the hearing process contemplated by the Code Section,” the legal memo says. “Had the General Assembly intended to create an informal process in O.C.G.A. § 45-10-4 that could be initiated by any member of the public, it would have done so as it has in other areas of the law discussed herein. Instead, it provided for a structured process that is only commenced ‘upon formal charges being filed’.” More

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      ‘We’re all sitting ducks’ without more substantial gun control, Warnock says

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      Americans “are all sitting ducks” unless Congress passes more substantial gun control, US senator Raphael Warnock said Sunday, four days after two students and two teachers at a high school in his home state of Georgia were shot to death, allegedly by a teenager wielding a military-style rifle.Warnock’s comments Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press came in direct response to statements from Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, who had previously said the killings at Appalachee high in Winder, Georgia, demonstrated how it was a “fact of life” that US schools present “soft targets” to a “psycho [wanting] to make headlines”.Vance added that US schools therefore must take steps to bolster their security, but such an approach would not eliminate the mass shootings in the US that have occurred in many other types of locales, Warnock – a Democrat – said both on Meet the Press as well as on CNN’s State of the Union.Of the nearly 390 mass shootings that had been reported in the US so far this year at the time of Warnock’s remarks, three of them were at schools, including the attack at Appalachee, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive and Education Week. Meanwhile, the killings at Appalachee were the only mass murder of 23 reported in the US so far to have happened at a school.The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are killed or wounded. A mass murder is one in which four or more victims are killed.Vance “talks about hardening our schools and making them secure – well the reality is this is happening in spas, in shopping malls”, Warnock said on CNN. “It’s happening in houses of worship, in medical clinics.“What are we going to do? Make the whole country into a fort?”He told NBC: “We’re all sitting ducks. And any country that allows this to continue without putting forward just common sense safety measures is a country that has – in a tragic way – lost its way.”Warnock alluded to an April 2023 Fox News poll which reaffirmed that the vast majority of Americans favored strengthening gun safety laws. And he said Congress took an encouraging first step toward treating such public support as a mandate when it enacted bipartisan legislation that expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers while funding mental health and violence intervention programs.But what was the first major federal firearms safety bill to pass Congress in nearly three decades was “clearly not enough”, Warnock said, noting how the US continues recording a number of mass shootings that is disproportionate at the global level.Warnock said polls show most in the US overwhelmingly support universal background checks. Furthermore, Warnock said that large numbers of Americans support banning general access to assault-style rifles and semi-automatic firearms.Yet federal lawmakers have not been able to get enough votes to clear procedural hurdles preventing Congress from meaningfully consider either issue. Warnock on Sunday blamed that reality on congressmembers who – out of ambition or fear – accept financial support from the wealthy gun industry.“We are at an impasse because there are people in … politics … who are doing the bidding of the corporatist gun lobby even as they line their pockets with the blood of our children,” Warnock said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs if on cue, the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Sunday published a clip on its Twitter/X account showing Warnock answering a question about whether Kamala Harris should support a mandatory gun buyback program as she runs for the White House in November against Donald Trump.Warnock did not say “yes”, instead replying: “We’re not going to be able to get where we need to go without action in Congress. We’ve got to be able to pass some laws to deal with this.” Additionally, he repeatedly told CNN and NBC that he was not proposing to repeal the constitutional US right to bear arms.The NRA – which remains an influential lobbying group – nonetheless wrote Sunday that Warnock “wants to confiscate millions of guns from law-abiding Americans”.The shooter suspect at Appalachee faces murder charges over the slayings of two of his fellow 14-year-old students and a pair of mathematics teachers. The accused shooter’s father is also charged with second-degree murder for gifting his son the AR-15-style rifle used in the school attack.“Fourteen-year-olds don’t need AR-15s,” Warnock said. More

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      Mother of Georgia Suspect Called School Minutes Before Shooting, Family Says

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      The mother told relatives she reached out to the school on Wednesday morning, warning of an emergency, the suspect’s aunt said Saturday.The mother of the 14-year-old boy charged with fatally shooting four people at his Georgia high school this week told relatives that she had called the school on the morning of the attack, warning of an “extreme emergency,” her sister said on Saturday.Officials said the suspect, Colt Gray, opened fire on Wednesday morning on the campus of Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., killing two students and two teachers and injuring nine others. The authorities said reports of a shooting came in at about 10:20 a.m. But the suspect’s mother, Marcee Gray, had apparently called the school at 9:50 a.m., her sister, Annie Brown, said.It was unclear what in particular led the mother to call the school that morning.The emergence of the possible alert from the suspect’s mother intensifies the scrutiny now applied to his family, school officials and law enforcement officials about missed opportunities to heed warning signs and intervene before the attack.Ms. Gray told Ms. Brown in a text message after the shooting that she had notified a counselor at the school, Ms. Brown said. The phone call to the school was first reported on Saturday by The Washington Post, which cited Ms. Brown, text messages and a call log from the family’s shared phone plan that documented a 10-minute phone call from the mother’s number to the school.Ms. Brown confirmed the details of The Post’s reporting to The New York Times on Saturday evening. And a federal law enforcement official confirmed that the mother had called the school shortly before the shooting.A spokeswoman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which has been handling the investigation, declined to comment on Saturday. Jud Smith, the sheriff for Barrow County, Ga., where the shooting occurred, did not immediately reply to messages seeking comment, nor did officials from the Barrow County School System.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Georgia to Put School Shooting Suspect’s Parent on Trial, Testing a Novel Tactic

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      After four people were killed at Apalachee High School, prosecutors charged a student and his father, who officials say had given the boy the gun as a gift.In a landmark criminal case in Michigan earlier this year, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents convicted in connection with killings carried out by their child in a mass shooting.Now, in the first mass school shooting in the United States since those convictions, Georgia officials appear poised to try the same tactic. On Thursday, prosecutors filed charges, including two counts of second-degree murder, against the father of the suspected gunman, saying he had provided a gun to his son “with knowledge that he was a threat to himself and others.”Such charges were all but unheard of before the Michigan case, and the Georgia prosecution will test the emerging push to hold parents responsible for mass shootings by young people.The bigger test may be whether the prospect of criminal prosecution spurs parents to do more to seek help for troubled children and to keep them away from guns in a country awash in firearms.Proponents of such prosecutions have said that charging parents can help prevent young people from carrying out such shootings. But critics say it’s a misguided effort that scapegoats parents while lawmakers fail to act to reduce gun violence. And its effectiveness as a deterrent may be limited by the deep dysfunction already at play in the families of some of the young people implicated in mass shootings.The prosecution of the Crumbleys, after their 15-year-old son killed four people in 2021 at a high school outside Detroit, was seen as a long shot. But in separate trials, the Crumbleys were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years in prison.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Georgia Suspect’s Family Faced Eviction and Other Turmoil Before Shooting

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      Court and law enforcement records lay out the turbulence in the teenager’s family in recent years.The 14-year-old accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school this week had switched middle schools and drawn the attention of authorities who suspected he had posted school shooting threats online.His mother had repeated encounters with law enforcement and had been ordered to stay away from drugs and alcohol. His family had been evicted from their home because of unpaid rent, and his parents had split.Interviews with relatives and others who knew the teenager, and a review of court documents and law enforcement records, reflected a family in constant turmoil in the years before the shooting this week at Apalachee High School in Winder.The suspect, Colt Gray, has been charged with four counts of murder for the Wednesday morning attack in which two students and two math teachers were killed and eight other students were injured. During his first court appearance on Friday, a judge informed him that he could face a maximum penalty of life in prison.His father, Colin Gray, is facing second-degree murder and other charges, as officials argue that he shoulders considerable blame for giving his son the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle used in the attack. The weapon was a Christmas gift last year, according to three law enforcement officials. Mr. Gray, 54, faces a maximum sentence of 180 years in prison, if convicted.During the brief hearing on Friday, relatives of the people who were killed sat directly behind the defendants, only a few feet away. The grief that the community in Winder is now wrestling with was palpable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Father of Accused Georgia Shooter Charged With Two Counts of Second-Degree Murder

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      The father of the 14-year-old accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school was arrested and charged on Thursday with two counts of second-degree murder in connection with the attack, the state’s Bureau of Investigation said.The father, Colin Gray, 54, was also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, officials said at a news conference on Thursday night.The charges against Mr. Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Chris Hosey, the bureau director, said at the news conference. He declined to provide details, including what evidence had given the authorities probable cause to charge Mr. Gray in the attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga.Earlier on Thursday, Charlie Polhamus, the teenager’s maternal grandfather, said he believed his grandson was responsible for what happened, but he also cast some of the blame on the tumult in the teenager’s home life with his father, who had split from Mr. Polhamus’s daughter. “My grandson did what he did because of the environment that he lived in,” Mr. Polhamus said. When investigators looking into an online threat spoke to Mr. Gray last year, he said he had been teaching his son, then 13, about hunting and guns to divert his attention from video games. The teenager denied making the threat to “shoot up a middle school” and claimed his account on the social media platform Discord had been hacked, according to a transcript of the May 2023 interview.Mr. Gray told the investigator that he had often discussed “all the school shootings, things that happen.” He also suggested that he had emphasized the dangers of using a firearm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More