Today is Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Today the judge overseeing Donald Duck’s Georgia election subversion case dismissed six counts in the indictment, including three against the former president, but said prosecutors can seek to bring the charges again. This unsettling development is reported on in a salon online article by Igor Derysh entitled “Georgia judge drops some charges – but experts say it could be a bad sign for Trump.”

Judge Scott McAfee wrote in an order that he is dismissing six counts charging Drumpf and several codefendants with soliciting public officials to break the law because they “contain all the essential elements of the crimes” but “fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission.” You need to be a lawyer to understand the judge’s reasoning here, but at the outset, it seems as if the case has been weakened for the insurrectionist of January 6, 2021. However, people wiser than me portray this development as not so dire; actually, they say it could be worse for the former president. Let’s explore how.

The ruling affects three of the 13 felony counts Trump faces but not the central charge of a racketeering conspiracy intended to overturn the 2020 election. The other dropped charges applied to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Drumpf consigliore Rudy Giuliani, January 6 architect John Eastman, and two Drumpf campaign attorneys.

Georgia State University Law Professor Anthony Michael Kreis told The New York Times that the ruling does not weaken the racketeering charge that remains central to the case and that prosecutors could reintroduce versions of the dismissed charges to a grand jury with more specifics.

Speaking to The Guardian, Kreis said, “I think it is a minor hiccup for the DA and less so signs of a fatal flaw.”

One expert, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, warned that if prosecutors seek a superseding indictment, “it will make it difficult to try the case before the election.”

The ruling was delivered as McAfee is expected to rule on a motion from several defense lawyers in the case seeking to disqualify District Attorney (DA) Fani Willis over an alleged improper relationship with a special prosecutor she picked to lead the case.

CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen suggested that McAfee’s ruling today is “somewhat of an indication” that the judge won’t disqualify Willis.

Explaining why he thinks McAfee won’t disqualify Willis, Eisen says, “If he were gonna disqualify Willis, he likely would not have bothered to wrap up this very detailed order, since he’s busy and disqualification will effectively freeze the case for a while.”

Eisen notes that his reasoning here is “not a strong indicator but possible hint” that Willis will be allowed to prosecute Drumpf in Georgia. I and many millions of other Americans surely hope Eisen’s hunch is correct here. Who wants another delay in yet another trial of the former president? This is totally unacceptable and the American people are losing their patience.

In response to Eisen’s theory, Kreis tweeted that he thinks Norm may be right here. So that’s good, wouldn’t you think?

Even though the MAGA candidate did win Georgia on Tuesday, the mere fact that Nikki Haley received 77,761 votes is a bad sign for the former’s candidacy, according to an online Boingboing article by Carla Sinclair entitled “Nikki Haley got 77,761 votes in Georgia, and she wasn’t even on the ballot – ‘a real problem’ for MAGA.”

Thus in the Georgia primary on Tuesday, Haley got 77,761 votes – or 13.2 percent – and she wasn’t even on the ballot. And the former South Carolina’s governor’s percentage points more than tripled in parts of Atlanta, shooting up to 40 percent in DeKalb County and 38 percent in Fulton County, according to Meidas Touch Network.

Here we’re talking about a state in which repugnican candidates won the presidency for 20 years straight – from 1996 until 2016 – according to USElectionAtlas.org. It wasn’t until 2020 that the state turned blue again, with the majority voting for President Biden (though by a slim margin).

Mike Madrid, longtime Republican and cofounder of The Lincoln Project, said, “This is BIG! Trump’s problems in the suburbs continue in Georgia. Lemme say it again: Trump’s got a real problem with the Republican base.”

Meidas Touch released a statement, stating, that “Nearly 60% of Nikki Haley primary voters have consistently said in polls they will never vote for Donald Trump. Trump’s underperformance in the largest counties in the state in the primary are a massive red flag for his campaign ahead of the general election in November.

If that level of ‘never Trump’ vote holds, Trump will have a very hard time winning Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, which are crucial for winning the presidency.”

So even on face value, this supposed “win” for Drumpf could bode ill for the presumptive repugnican candidate when it’s time to vote in the general election. We can only pray it is!

Stay safe and be well.