‘Donald Trump Is Still a Criminal Defendant’: CNN Reports on New Prosecutor in Georgia Election Case

A new prosecutor has been appointed to a Georgia criminal case involving President Donald Trump and multiple co-defendants just before a deadline, keeping the case alive.

The case was initially brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in August 2023, against Trump and 18 others (including former New York City Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, former Trump staffer Mike Roman, and several lawyers who have represented Trump and his campaign, including Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, and Kenneth Chesebro) for their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

Several of the co-defendants pled guilty, including attorneys Ellis, Powell, and Chesebro. In early 2024, Willis had to fend off a motion to disqualify her from the case related to a romantic relationship she had with prosecutor Nathan Wade. The trial court ruled in Willis’ favor — disqualifying Wade but not Willis — but a Georgia appeals court reversed that ruling in December 2024 and disqualified Willis as well.

Especially after Trump was re-elected, many thought the case might be dead as the months ticked by with no new prosecutor appointed.

Then, just at the eleventh hour before the deadline when the case would expire, Peter Skandalakis assigned himself the case, reported CNN on Friday. Skandalakis is the director of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council of Georgia, a bipartisan committee of three solicitors general and six district attorneys in the state.

CNN correspondent Katelyn Polantz reported on the new developments in the case during Inside Politics with Dana Bash on Friday, noting that Skandalakis “is appointing himself because nobody else was willing to be the prosecutor on this case.”

The new prosecutor would now “have to make a lot of decisions about what to do next,” continued Polantz, including reviewing the evidence and making strategic decisions about how to move forward “very quickly” because there was already a status conference scheduled on Dec. 1, in front of the judge who has been presiding over the case.

Skandalakis told reporters he just recently got the investigation files, with Willis’ office sending him 101 boxes of documents on Oct. 29 and an eight-terabyte hard drive on Nov. 6.

Among Skandalakis’ options, Polantz explained, were to “recharge the case,” “rewrite the indictment in some way,” “keep the case as it is,” or “dismiss it outright.”

Of course, said Polantz, the big difference in the case now is that “Donald Trump is in the White House — can you prosecute a sitting president even if it is a state criminal case?”

“A lot of questions for this prosecutor, but it is a reminder, Dana, that Donald Trump still is a criminal defendant in the state of Georgia,” Polantz concluded.

“Yeah, that is a very, very big unanswered question about whether he can be brought to trial as a sitting president,” said Bash. “Guessing — I think I know where the DOJ would go on that one.”

“This politically charged prosecution has to come to an end. We remain confident that a fair and impartial review will lead to a dismissal of the case against President Trump,” Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow told CNN.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!