The only remaining criminal case against Donald Trump has been revived after the head of Georgia’s prosecutor’s council appointed himself to replace Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, who was removed from the election interference case in September.
Pete Skandalakis, a Republican and the executive director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, the state body that provides legal training and is often charged to mitigate prosecutorial conflicts, wrote in a statement on Friday that he would be taking over for Willis.
A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to find enough votes to beat Biden.
The case remains the only criminal prosecution of Trump remaining, but it has been on life support after Willis was disqualified by the Georgia supreme court, which ruled that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, revealed in dramatic court filings in January 2024, created an impermissible appearance of a conflict of interest.
Four people have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. While president, Trump is protected from state-level prosecutions, but the other 14 remaining defendants are still subject to prosecution.
“The filing of this appointment reflects my inability to secure another conflict prosecutor to assume responsibility for this case,” Skandalakis said. “Several prosecutors were contacted and, while all were respectful and professional, each declined the appointment.”
Fulton county’s courts have called on Skandalakis to resolve a conflict before in this case, after Scott McAfee, Fulton county’s superior court judge, found that Willis’s office had a conflict of interest with Burt Jones, who served as one of 16 “alternate” GOP electors in Georgia to cast a vote for Trump during the 2020 legal conflict over election results. Skandalakis ultimately declined to press charges in the case against Jones, who is now Georgia’s lieutenant governor and a candidate for governor in 2026.
McAfee set a 14 November deadline for Skandalakis to find a new prosecutor on the Trump racketeering indictment to avoid dismissing the case entirely.
“While it would have been simple to allow Judge McAfee’s deadline to lapse or to inform the court that no conflict prosecutor could be secured – thereby allowing the case to be dismissed for want of prosecution – I did not believe that to be the right course of action,” Skandalakis said. “The public has a legitimate interest in the outcome of this case. Accordingly, it is important that someone make an informed and transparent determination about how best to proceed.”
Skandalakis noted that he did not receive the complete investigative file from Fulton county prosecutors until last week. He appointed himself as prosecutor to “complete a comprehensive review and make an informed decision regarding how best to proceed”.
In addition to Trump, Mark Meadows, the president’s former chief of staff, and former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani remain defendants in the case. Trump pardoned Meadows and Giuliani of any federal crime related to the 2020 election, a largely symbolic gesture.
Upon receipt of Skandalakis’s letter naming himself as prosecutor, McAfee immediately scheduled a pretrial status conference for 1 December, asking prosecutors to tell him whether they intend to seek a superseding indictment to continue the case.
