(NewsReady.com) – Questions are being asked about Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s racketeering case against former President Donald Trump after she was forced to remove her ex-boyfriend from the case. However, she’s still pushing ahead—and even trying to widen the investigation. She’s going after the state’s lieutenant governor, who was named but not indicted in the original case against Trump, despite having been removed from the case against him.
On April 11, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia announced that its executive director, Peter Skandalakis, had been appointed to prosecute Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones (R). In 2020, Jones was a state senator, and he’s accused of being one of the “alternate electors” who backed Trump as having won the state in that year’s presidential election. Willis was originally prosecuting the case herself, convening a grand jury in May 2022 and launching an investigation of Jones.
At the time, Jones was campaigning for election as lieutenant governor, and on June 14, 2022, with the investigation already underway, Willis hosted a fundraiser for Charlie Bailey, the Democratic candidate in that election. Jones quickly filed a request to disqualify her from the case, saying she had an obvious conflict of interest. The following month, the Fulton County Superior Court upheld that request, saying that while Willis had a right to support Bailey, that support “has consequences” and created “a plain—and actual and untenable—conflict.”
With Willis removed from the case, Skandalakis was given the job of choosing a replacement. It’s taken him almost two years, and now he’s chosen himself. Although the statement says Skandalakis “or his designee” will prosecute Jones, it’s a safe bet that if he were going to designate someone else to do it, he wouldn’t have appointed himself. Skandalakis is now District Attorney Pro Tempore on the Atlanta Judicial Circuit, for the duration of the case. Meanwhile, Jones said he’s “happy to see this process move forward.”
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