Trump could recoup legal fees in Georgia election case under new bill

ATLANTA (CN) — Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill into law Wednesday that could allow President Donald Trump to recover millions of dollars worth of legal fees spent in the state’s case accusing the president of interfering in the 2020 elections.

Senate Bill 244 allows criminal defendants to recover attorney fees and legal costs if the prosecutor of their case is disqualified for misconduct and the case is dismissed.

In December, a panel of all Republican-appointed judges on the Georgia Court of Appeals ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office should be removed from prosecuting the president’s case. The case remains on hold as Georgia’s Supreme Court weighs whether to take up Willis’s appeal of the decision.

If the high court upholds the disqualification of Willis — which was ordered due to an “appearance of impropriety” stemming from her relationship with the case’s former special prosecutor, Nathan Wade — the costly reimbursements would fall on local taxpayers’ pockets.

The legislation was sponsored by state Senator Brandon Beach, a Republican and staunch Trump ally who was recently appointed by the president to serve as the next U.S. Treasurer.

In the last days of the state’s legislative session, the measure was amended to revive the Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act, a stalled House bill aimed at providing reparations to people who were wrongfully incarcerated.

Kemp’s signature on the bill establishes a new standardized process under state law for people who have been exonerated for crimes they did not commit. It requires administrative law judges to rule on wrongful conviction compensation cases and award a standardized rate of $75,000 for each year of incarceration to each exoneree, with an additional $25,000 added for each year spent on death row.

Georgia was one of 12 states without such a law, according to an analysis by the Georgia Innocence Project. Until now, the process was done on a case-by-case basis, requiring state lawmakers to pass individual compensation bills that had to go through the full legislative process like any other bill.

According to the Georgia Innocence Project, many exonerees, including five who tried this year, have gone through the arduous process and were still left empty-handed.

“Wrongful conviction is one of the most devastating injustices imaginable for impacted individuals and their families, and the nightmare does not end at exoneration,” the nonprofit law firm said in a statement Wednesday.

“Exonerees face major barriers after release, from trauma, to struggling to find housing or employment due to their years out of the job market. While no amount of money can return the years or decades lost to wrongful conviction, the new law will be instrumental in helping those impacted rebuild their lives,” it added.

But many Democrats of the Republican-dominated General Assembly expressed opposition to the bill during this year’s legislative session.

Atlanta Democratic state Representative Shea Roberts said it put legislators “in a moral straitjacket.”

“If you want to support justice for the wrongfully convicted, you also have to support protecting powerful politicians from accountability. That’s not leadership, that’s hostage-taking," Roberts said during the bill’s passage last month.

But the proposal ultimately passed the Senate 35-18, with all Republicans voting in favor and three Democrats crossing over party lines to vote yes.

Republican Senator Shawn Still, who is one of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in Willis’ election interference case, did not vote on the measure.

Trump’s campaign has spent roughly $2.7 million on legal fees in the case, where he is charged with racketeering and a dozen other felonies, including solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree and false statements and writings.

According to The Hill, Trump’s Atlanta attorney Steve Sadow, was paid $1.5 million in the second half of 2023. The Georgia Republican Party has also contributed significantly, paying at least $2 million in legal fees for his co-defendants.

At least $54 million of Trump’s campaign money has been used towards the sprawling legal costs of the multiple charges he faced after leaving office four years ago.

Now back in the White House, the president seized on the prosecutions against him as a potent fundraising tool to receive millions in donations to his affiliated PACS. His booking at the Atlanta jail in the Georgia case gave him a record single-day haul, as the first former president in U.S. history to have a mug shot taken.

Kemp signing the bill could potentially offer the president a helping hand, reflects a recent shift in the governor’s public support of Trump, after he refuted his election fraud attacks on Georgia after the 2020 presidential election.

The president has also cornered several prominent law firms into providing free legal services for causes supported by his administration out of threats of sanctions.

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