A mega-hearing was held on Friday in Fulton County, Georgia, during which defense attorneys in the massive racketeering case against Donald Trump and 18 others presented motions intended to dismiss or delay the case. While there are several other issues to be heard, including whether Trump was protected by the First Amendment in making false claims about election fraud, the first half of the day was devoted to a single issue: Can the state prosecute Trump’s slate of false electors?
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee spent the morning dealing with issues that go deep into the Constitution, with attorneys for the false electors arguing that this was “not a matter for a jury to decide"—but then demanding a judicial dismissal of the whole case.
Much of the argument seemed to flip on its head the idea of states’ rights under the 10th Amendment as attorneys for the Republican defendants argued that if there is any dispute, the House can determine which electors are legitimate and the state has nothing to do with it.
Attorneys for the false electors argued that the people brought in to sign a petition claiming to be “true electors” for Trump were not false electors at all, but “contingent electors.” This is a term that these attorneys have been using since first filing some of these motions in September, but which doesn’t exist in either the Constitution or law.
At the core of the argument made by the false electors’ attorneys is the claim that Georgia failed to...
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