Georgia Senate Passes Bill Allowing Trump and Allies to Recover Costs of 2020 Election Case

The proposed law would entitle defendants in criminal cases an award of legal fees if the prosecuting attorney is disqualified.

Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump attends a roundtable with faith leaders at Christ Chapel in Zebulon, Ga., on Oct. 23, 2024. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Georgia’s Senate has approved a bill that could allow President Donald Trump and his allies to get compensated for legal fees in the criminal case stemming from their challenge to the 2020 election results.

Senate Bill 244, which passed unanimously on Thursday, would grant defendants in criminal cases the right to recover their legal expenses if the prosecuting attorney is disqualified due to improper conduct.

If the defendants successfully get the prosecutor removed from their criminal case due to misconduct, the bill states, they can request reimbursement for their attorney’s fees and costs once the case has ended.

Trump, along with 18 co-defendants, was indicted in Fulton County in August 2023 on a dozen charges, including racketeering conspiracy, for his efforts to challenge the official results in the battleground state in the 2020 presidential election. The investigation preceding the indictment was led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has since faced scrutiny for her intimate relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired for the case.

Last December, a state appeals court declined to dismiss the case itself but removed Willis and her office from it, citing a “significant appearance of impropriety” on the part of the prosecution. The decision overturned an earlier ruling by the presiding judge that would have allowed Willis to stay on the case as long as Wade resigned.

Willis has appealed the disqualification, and the Georgia Supreme Court has yet to decide whether it will take up the case.

While the bill could directly impact Trump’s ability to seek reimbursement for legal expenses, Georgia Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II said it could have broader implications beyond this high-profile case.

“If you have that young person, possession of marijuana, whatever it may be, and the prosecutor has done something wrong, and that case is dismissed because the prosecutor did something wrong, they’re entitled to have their attorney’s fees back,” said Jones, a Democrat representing Augusta. “That’s actually something that we probably would have pushed many years ago.”

Senate Bill 255, which would give State and House committees subpoena powers, was also passed on Thursday. The bill passed along party lines in a 33–23 vote.

In January, Georgia state senators voted along party lines to reinstate a Special Committee on Investigation, which spent the past year probing allegations of misconduct against Willis during her handling of the Trump election case.

Last year, the committee tried to subpoena Willis for a hearing, but she defied the subpoena. Willis, who was reelected to her office, initially argued that the committee lacked authority to subpoena her, later contending that any subpoenas would become void in January 2024 when a new General Assembly was sworn in.

In February, a Fulton County judge rejected Willis’ argument that subpoenas issued by the Special Committee would expire with the legislative turnover.

“If, every time a subpoena is issued by a Special Committee, a recipient can simply litigate its validity and enforcement until the General Assembly reconstitutes and then they have to start over, this would be an absurd result indeed,” the judge’s order read.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.