A prosecutor has been chosen to continue the investigation of Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was caught up in the state’s election tampering investigations after serving as one of former President Donald Trump’s alternate electors during the 2020 election.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis barred her from investigating Jones in July 2022 after he hosted a fundraiser for his political opponent, halting the investigation.
Court filings state that the inquiry’s targets were Jones and the other alternate electors.
The independent counsel entrusted with picking the new prosecutor has announced that Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, will take over the inquiry.
Skandalakis will determine whether to file any charges.
According to congressional investigators, the so-called “fake elector” scheme was designed to gather “groups of individuals in key battleground states and get them to call themselves electors, create phony certificates associated with these fake electors, and then transmit these certificates to Washington and to the Congress, to be counted during the joint session of Congress on January 6th.”
In a previous statement, Skandalakis stated that “this case is unprecedented in its scope and nature.”
Jones said in a statement that he was “happy to see this process move forward and look forward to the opportunity to get this charade behind me.”
Jones quoted Fani Willis as saying, “As she often does, she has made a mockery of this legal process.” “I look forward to a quick resolution and moving forward with Georgia’s business.”
Last August, Trump and 18 others pleaded not guilty to all allegations in a sweeping racketeering indictment alleging efforts to change the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
Four co-defendants then accepted plea deals in exchange for agreeing to testify against other defendants.
