Georgia Judge Refuses to Dismiss Charges Against Pro-Trump Attorney Sidney Powell

ATLANTA – A Georgia judge on Thursday refused to dismiss charges against pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell, but did agree with her defense attorneys that prosecutors should be ordered to thoroughly ensure they turned over any exculpatory evidence as required by law.

“Just purely on procedural grounds I don't believe that this motion to dismiss for misconduct...I don’t see that as clearing, just a procedural bar (or) being something that’s under the court’s authority,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said near the end of the hearing. 

Thursday's hearing was held in response to two pre-trial motions filed by Powell arguing that the case should be dismissed due to “prosecutorial misconduct” and that prosecutors should produce additional potentially exculpatory evidence–referred to in legal terms as “Brady material."

Although Powell's motion to dismiss was a more extensive document, totaling more than 200 pages including exhibits, most of Thursday's 80-minute hearing centered on the motion regarding evidence.

Powell’s attorney, Brian Rafferty, vigorously argued that the state was withholding exculpatory evidence or had hidden it in the massive amount of discovery that was turned over - citing a “needle in the haystack” argument. 

After prosecutors said they had turned over all relevant evidence, McAfee prodded Rafferty to be more specific in his demands.

“I need to hear more exactly about what it is concretely that the state needs to be doing," the judge said.

Ultimately, McAfee said he would be open to asking prosecutors to double check for more Brady material to turn over to the defense, but that "that motion to dismiss just isn’t going to have much legs."

McAfee did warn prosecutors that if in subsequent trials it were shown that any exculpatory evidence was missed, they’d be “setting themselves up.”

“We can file an order… the state would have the obligation to double check, triple check, and during the second or however many trials we have something else comes up, then the state is really setting itself up,” McAfee said.

Powell, a former election attorney for former President Donald Trump, has been charged with seven state felony counts and faces trial beginning Oct. 20 alongside fellow Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Following the hearing, attorneys for Chesebro spoke to McAfee and asked if he’d entertain a motion for an “interlocutory appeal,” a legal maneuver to have an appellate court re-consider the denial of their motion to dismiss charges, which would set back the trial schedule by over a month.

But McAfee wasn’t having it.

“It would take the court of appeals 40 to 45 days to tell us they would take the case,” McAfee said, noting that subpoenas have already gone out for 900 potential jurors. “Defendants have requested a speedy trial, and we’re going to provide one.”