We’ve heard it said many times that the Democrats who are relying on lawfare to go after Donald Trump won’t stop with him. The conventional wisdom is that Trump is just the tip of the iceberg and other conservatives are next in line.
This week, we’re seeing this phenomenon at play in Georgia. For context, let’s go back to July 2022. When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis began her wasteful investigation into Donald Trump, one of her targets was then-state Sen. Burt Jones, who was running for lieutenant governor.
At the time, I wrote, “Willis wanted to subpoena him to ask about his role as part of an alternate slate of electors who would have chosen Trump as Georgia’s presidential election winner. The attempt to paint Jones as an insurrectionist is painfully obvious; one of the first sentences on his Wikipedia entry reads, ‘He was involved with the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.’”
There was a teeny problem that Chief Judge Robert McBurney noticed: Willis was actively involved in campaigning for Jones’ rival in the lieutenant governor’s race, Charlie Bailey, who was also shacking up with Willis’ spokesperson and later married her. McBurney was having none of it, and he barred Willis from investigating Jones due to the conflict of interest. However, the judge left the door open for another prosecutor to investigate Jones.
Flashback: Georgia District Attorney Investigating Trump Runs Into a Snag
Fast forward nearly two years later, and Jones is lieutenant governor. The Associated Press is reporting that the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia has chosen to investigate Jones. Rather than appointing a special prosecutor, Pete Skandalakis, the council’s executive director, chose to undertake the investigation himself.
“Jones was one of 16 state Republicans who signed a certificate stating that Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s ‘duly elected and qualified’ electors even though Democrat Joe Biden had been declared the winner in the state,” reports the AP. Jones says that he and the other alternate electors signed the certificate to be ready to go if Trump prevailed in his court challenge to the election.
Skandalakis is a veteran prosecutor whom Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appointed to prosecute the police officers who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks in the parking lot of an Atlanta Wendy’s in 2022. He later dropped the charges against the officers. Will he do the same for Jones? He has made no comment in relation to Jones’ case.
“I’m happy to see this process move forward and look forward to the opportunity to get this charade behind me,” Jones said in a statement. “Fani Willis has made a mockery of this legal process, as she tends to do. I look forward to a quick resolution and moving forward with the business of the state of Georgia.”
WSB-TV reports that Willis’ office had no comment about the Jones case.
Stay tuned to see whether Skandalakis will drag Jones through the mud the same way Willis has Trump and his co-defendants. Jones is a bright young star among Georgia’s conservative leaders, so here’s hoping that Skandalakis will do the right thing and let Jones do his job serving the people of Georgia.
The prosecution of Donald Trump in Fulton County and the other ridiculous trials are nothing short of political persecution. The left wants nothing more than to neutralize Trump and keep him from defeating Joe Biden in 2024, and don’t kid yourself: Democrats would do the same to any other Republican frontrunner.
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