Lt. Gov. Burt Jones of Georgia will not be criminally charged for acting as a fake elector for Donald J. Trump in 2020, when he was a state senator, a special prosecutor announced on Friday.
The decision not to indict Mr. Jones was made by Pete Skandalakis, a veteran Georgia prosecutor who, like the lieutenant governor, is a Republican. It is a major victory for Mr. Jones, who is a prominent and unflagging Trump supporter and may run for governor in 2026.
But the prosecutor’s findings included an implicit rebuke of the Trump legal team. In a statement released Friday afternoon, Mr. Skandalakis said that lawyers for Mr. Trump had “continued to make false and misleading statements regarding the election results,” even after the state’s top officials had said there was no evidence of widespread fraud sufficient to change the result of Georgia’s election.
Mr. Jones was originally investigated by Fani T. Willis, a Democrat who is the Fulton County district attorney, as part of her inquiry into efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia. But in 2022 a judge disqualified Ms. Willis from developing a case against Mr. Jones because she had hosted a fund-raiser for a political rival of his.
As head of the attorneys’ council, Mr. Skandalakis was then required to find a replacement prosecutor to determine whether Mr. Jones should be charged. Mr. Skandalakis took nearly two years to do so, and ended up deciding that he himself would be the best person for the job. He took another five months to conclude that Mr. Jones should not be prosecuted.
“My review of the evidence finds this matter does not warrant further consideration,” Mr. Skandalakis said in his statement on Friday. “The evidence reveals Senator Jones acted in a manner consistent with his position representing the concerns of his constituents and in reliance upon the advice of attorneys when he served as an alternate elector. The evidence also indicates Senator Jones did not act with criminal intent, which is an essential element of committing any crime.”
Mr. Jones, a 45-year-old businessman with an aw-shucks demeanor who played for the University of Georgia football team, has repeatedly insisted that he was innocent. In 2022, he handily defeated a Democratic rival in the race for lieutenant governor.
In late 2020, when Mr. Jones was a state senator, he was among numerous people recruited by the Trump campaign to be bogus electors in several swing states as part of a coordinated effort to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Since then, 36 of them have been criminally charged in four states. Two of them — one in Michigan and one in Arizona — have struck cooperation deals with prosecutors. A case against six fake electors in Nevada was thrown out this year because of a venue question and is being appealed. All of the prosecutors in the cases are Democrats.
Georgia is the only one of the four states that has indicted Mr. Trump, though he has also been charged in a federal election interference case brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department.
Mr. Trump was also convicted of 34 felonies in a Manhattan court this year, in a case that focused on hush-money payments made to an adult film star during the 2016 election campaign.
Mr. Jones and 15 other Georgia Republicans met at the State Capitol in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020 and signed documents asserting that they were “duly elected and qualified” electors on behalf of Mr. Trump. Some of them, including Mr. Jones, argued that they were acting to preserve Mr. Trump’s rights in the event that courts agreed with his challenges of the election results.
Most of the fake electors in Georgia eventually reached cooperation deals with Ms. Willis’s office before charges were brought.
Mr. Skandalakis’s delay in reaching his conclusion spurred a lawsuit from Wayne Kendall, a Georgia civil rights lawyer, who also sought to have Mr. Skandalakis taken off the case.
While Mr. Skandalakis deliberated over choosing a new prosecutor, a Fulton County grand jury handed up a sprawling felony racketeering indictment in August 2023 that named Mr. Trump and 18 allies, including some who had served as fake electors. Four of the defendants have since pleaded guilty; among them are Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who was an architect of the fake electors plan.
Mr. Skandalakis is a widely known and respected figure in Georgia civic life. He served for years as the district attorney in a five-county district southwest of Atlanta before heading the prosecutors’ council.
In 2022, the state attorney general chose him to determine whether criminal charges were warranted against two Atlanta police officers after one of them fatally shot a Black man, Rayshard Brooks, during an arrest attempt in 2020. Mr. Skandalakis eventually determined that the officers had not committed crimes.
Mr. Jones has boasted that he was one of the first Georgia public officials to back Mr. Trump, and his efforts to help Mr. Trump after the 2020 election extended beyond his role as a fake elector.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Mr. Jones flew to Washington on Jan. 5, 2021, intending to lobby Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the Electoral College votes during a dinner at Mr. Pence’s home. But he ultimately did not raise the matter with Mr. Pence, according to the newspaper.
In a statement on Friday, Mr. Jones said that he had been a victim of a partisan investigation.
“I have always wanted to tell my story in front of a fair and unbiased prosecutor, which Fani Willis clearly is not,” he said. “I am thankful that I finally had the opportunity to do that. Ms. Willis has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars trying to weaponize our judicial system.”
Mr. Jones will be considered a formidable candidate if he chooses to run for governor in 2026 to replace Gov. Brian P. Kemp, a Republican, who will be term-limited. Mr. Jones comes from a wealthy family that could help finance his campaign. He would also run as an avatar of the Trump movement in a state Republican Party that has been divided over Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Chris Carr, the state’s attorney general, has already said that he plans to run for governor. Other potential Republican candidates include Kelly Loeffler, who is a former United States senator and a Trump ally, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
In early 2021, Mr. Trump called Mr. Raffensperger and pressured him to “find” enough votes to help him win Georgia. Mr. Raffensperger declined, making him a target of Mr. Trump’s wrath, and the call would ultimately serve as a basis of the criminal case against the former president in Georgia.
Ms. Willis is up for re-election in November, and is widely expected to win handily in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Atlanta.
The revelation that she had engaged in a romantic relationship with Nathan J. Wade, the lawyer she chose to manage the Trump prosecution team, set off the effort to remove her from that case. It also helped ensure that no trial for Mr. Trump would start in Georgia until after the November election.
Ms. Willis is facing scrutiny over the relationship, and questions over whether she and Mr. Wade engaged in financial self-dealing, from a State Senate panel that recently subpoenaed her to testify before it.
Ms. Willis, who is fighting the subpoena, was ordered to appear before the Senate committee on Friday morning but did not show up.
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