Nearly two years after a judge disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from investigating Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ activities following the 2020 election, a special prosecutor has been appointed to handle the case.
Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, has appointed himself to assume the investigation. Under Georgia code, the council’s executive director can appoint a special prosecutor if a district attorney is disqualified from a case. Several prosecutors had been reluctant to take on this particular assignment.
Fulton County prosecutors had been investigating Jones for signing onto a slate of electors for then-President Donald Trump after Joe Biden won Georgia’s electoral votes. Prosecutors ultimately charged three of the electors with filing false documents and forgery, among other felonies, in a sweeping racketeering indictment against Trump and more than a dozen others.
Prosecutors allege that efforts to submit Trump electors were part of a plot to help overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia and other swing states. The three electors facing charges, as well as Jones, have said they did nothing illegal.
“I’m happy to see this process move forward and look forward to the opportunity to get this charade behind me,” Jones wrote in a statement on Thursday. “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.”
