A state prosecutor on Friday announced he would decline to pursue criminal charges against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones regarding his efforts to aid Donald Trump as the former president sought to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
After spending five months investigating the former GOP state senator, Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, concluded “this matter does not warrant further consideration.”
“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,” Skandalakis said. “The evidence also indicates Senator Jones did not act with criminal intent, which is an essential element of committing any crime.”
Jones, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Georgia politics who is considered a likely contender for governor in 2026, was among the GOP electors labeled a “target” of the Fulton County election interference case. He escaped indictment after a judge found that District Attorney Fani Willis had conflict of interest, a decision that threw the investigation to Skandalakis’ organization.
In a four-page statement, the veteran prosecutor said Jones “fully cooperated,” sitting for four interviews and voluntarily handing over his text messages.
Skandalakis said he also examined Fulton prosecutors’ “extensive investigative file,” watched General Assembly committee hearings from December 2020 and reviewed transcripts from the witnesses who testified before the special purpose grand jury that aided the DA’s office for nearly eight months in 2022.
Skandalakis said he examined Jones’ motives and involvement in challenges to the 2020 general election results, including his role as a GOP elector and calls for a special session of the General Assembly to name Trump the winner of Georgia’s presidential election. Skandalakis concluded that neither further investigation nor the pursuit of criminal charges was necessary.
“Considering the facts, applicable law and the circumstances surrounding the events occurring in November and December of 2020 and January of 2021, I find the conduct and involvement of Senator Jones as an elected representative to be reasonable and not criminal in nature,” Skandalakis said.
Jones celebrated the end of the probe while taking a dig at Willis.
“I have always wanted to tell my story in front of a fair and unbiased prosecutor, which Fani Willis clearly is not. I am thankful that I finally had the opportunity to do that,” Jones said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in which he said he looked “forward to being able to focus on the work I was elected to do.”
“Ms. Willis has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars trying to weaponize our judicial system, increase her political profile and finance an inappropriate relationship with her boyfriend,” Jones said.
The Fulton County DA’s office declined to comment.
Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
A highly anticipated report
The decision was more than two years in the making. Skandalakis has been criticized — even made the defendant in a lawsuit — for taking so long.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney had tasked the council with investigating Jones in July 2022 after recusing Willis from doing so due to a conflict of interest.
Willis had previously labeled Jones and the other 15 Republicans who served as Trump electors as “targets” of her election interference investigation. But McBurney barred Willis from taking further action on Jones after the DA hosted a fundraiser for Charlie Bailey, the Democrat who would become Jones’ opponent for lieutenant governor in the 2022 general election. (Jones won with more than 51% of the vote despite Bailey hammering the Republican for his role as GOP elector and the potential he could be criminally charged).
“It’s a ‘what are you thinking’ moment,” McBurney told Willis, saying the public needed to believe the investigation was nonpartisan and driven by the facts.
By law, the case then went to the council, a state agency that, among other things, appoints substitute prosecutors when a DA or solicitor general’s office has a conflict in a case.
The council stayed quiet about its plans with Jones even as Willis announced she had secured felony racketeering charges against Trump and 18 others in August 2023, including three activists who served as Republican electors alongside Jones. Ditto for when the final recommendations of the special grand jury were released, which called for Jones and 38 others to be charged for meddling in the 2020 election.
Eventually, a group of four Georgia residents sued in February to get a judge to order Skandalakis to appoint a prosecutor to look into Jones.
Apparently unable to find a suitable DA or private attorney to handle the case, Skandalakis appointed himself in April.
Skandalakis is the former DA of the five-county Coweta Judicial Circuit and became executive of the prosecuting attorneys council in 2017. He has handled a number of high-profile cases while heading PAC. This includes his decision not to prosecute Atlanta police officers Garrett Rolfe and Devon Brosnan for the killing of Rayshard Brooks at a Wendy’s parking lot in June 2020.
Friday’s news came a day after Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, the trial judge overseeing the broader election case, struck three of the criminal counts from the indictment, ruling they violated the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy clause. They included two related to the false documents the GOP electors signed and submitted to federal court.
The bulk of the election interference case, meanwhile, remains on hold as nine of the defendants, including Trump, push the Georgia Court of Appeals to remove Willis from the case due in part to her former romantic relationship with onetime deputy Nathan Wade.
Natrice Miller/AJC
Natrice Miller/AJC
Post-election ‘misunderstanding’
Jones is now one of the most powerful politicians in Georgia. As head of the Georgia Senate, the state’s No. 2 Republican wields immense influence over the state budget, including funding for the council and the DAs Skandalakis’ agency represents. His chamber is also leading ongoing hearings sanctioned by Jones that seek to probe misconduct allegations over the way Willis has handled the investigation.
On Friday, one Senate committee held a hearing after subpoenaing testimony from Willis. The DA opted to skip as her attorney challenges the summons in court.
Jones said Willis owed an apology to Georgians “whose time and money she has wasted. She can start by being transparent with the General Assembly and complying with the subpoena issued for her testimony regarding the use of state tax dollars distributed to her office.”
In late 2020, Jones was among the loudest election skeptics in the state Legislature.
He was involved in the Judiciary subcommittee that handed itself over to figures like Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal attorney, to spread lies and misinformation about alleged fraud in Georgia’s vote count.
He served as a GOP elector, even though Democrat Joe Biden had been declared the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. And Jones was among the Republicans who called for a special legislative session at Trump’s urging to reverse the election results. Gov. Brian Kemp and other leaders refused, fueling a simmering feud with Trump.
Skandalakis said he considered Jones’ actions in the political context of late 2020, when constituents flooded many officeholders with reports of alleged election irregularities and the parties girded for a pair of high-stakes runoffs in Georgia that would determine which party controlled the U.S. Senate.
Skandalakis concluded that a “misunderstanding” led many, including Jones, to believe that drop boxes, absentee ballot provisions and other rules changes had been unilaterally approved by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a what many had erroneously labeled as a “consent decree” with state Democrats.
“Senator Jones was led to believe that the Secretary of State had done away with signature verification requiring two individuals for authentication of an absentee ballot and that the ballot drop boxes had been placed in areas which had made them vulnerable to ballot stuffing. He believed that only the Georgia Legislature has the authority to change election laws and that the ‘consent decree’ was illegal,” Skandalakis wrote.
He added that Jones “was hopeful that in the special session, the General Assembly could address the consent decree in time for the January 2021 U.S. Senate runoff election. He now knows that even if the General Assembly had changed some of the provisions of the consent decree during a special session in December of 2020, those changes, by operation of law, could not have taken effect prior to the January 2021 Senate runoff.”
AP
AP
Last-minute substitute
The council’s report also shares new details on how Jones became a GOP elector and his mindset in early January as he flew to Washington for an event with then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Jones was asked to sit in as an elector only the night before the group assembled in a committee room in the state Capitol, according to Skandalakis. Jones was solicited by a party leader via text message after original electors dropped out. Jones expressed reservations, he said, saying he wanted to first speak with his attorney father.
On Dec. 14, 2020, the day the activists signed documents stating they were the “duly elected and qualified electors,” Jones was again asked if he could serve as a substitute. He asked if party leaders could select someone else but eventually agreed to join the 15 other Republicans, Skandalakis said.
Jones has repeatedly said he committed no crime in casting that vote. He said he was following the advice of Ray Smith, a lawyer who addressed the Republican electors shortly before they voted. Smith, who now faces racketeering and other felony charges in the election interference case, said the electors were following a precedent set in Hawaii in the 1960 presidential election and that their actions would preserve Trump’s legal options in a pending lawsuit challenging the election results.
Skandalakis said that Jones shouldn’t be punished for following the advice of counsel.
“It is my experience and belief that we should encourage someone to seek the advice of a lawyer when faced with an uncertain legal issue,” he said. “Potentially punishing someone for exercising that right is contrary to our system of justice.”
Dinner with Pence
Skandalakis also described an email Jones received on Jan. 4, 2021 from then-State Sen. William Ligon, the Brunswick Republican who led the Senate Judiciary subcommittee that aired many of the Trump campaign’s most sinister fraud allegations.
After hearing that Jones had accepted an invite to attend a dinner with Pence at his residence in Washington, Ligon asked Jones to deliver a letter to the vice president that requested he delay counting electoral college votes for 12 days to allow time investigate fraud, irregularities and misconduct from the general election. The letter said that hearings in the Georgia House and Senate had uncovered extensive irregularities and fraud — claims that turned out to be untrue.
Skandalakis also detailed a meeting that had not been previously reported between Jones and a Trump campaign attorney at a D.C. hotel shortly before the dinner with Pence. Listening to the lawyer detail the legal strategies the campaign was pursuing, Jones “left that meeting with the impression that the Trump attorneys had no ‘tangible plan’ regarding contesting the election,” Skandalakis said.
Jones ultimately decided not to give Ligon’s letter to Pence. He told Skandalakis it “never entered his mind” to discuss the election or GOP electors with the vice president.
Staff writers David Wickert and Greg Bluestein contributed to this article.
