Judge Rules Georgia GOP Chair Can’t Share Lawyers With 10 Alternate Electors in 2020 Election Probe

David Shafer, Georgia GOP chairman, speaks at the opening ceremony of GOP’s Asian Pacific American Community Center in Berkeley Lake, Ga., on Sept. 17, 2021. Roland Ree/The Epoch Times

A judge ruled on Wednesday that Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer can’t share legal counsel with 10 other alternate electors before the special purpose grand jury in the probe of the 2020 election.

The grand jury is investigating post-election efforts to question the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, including 16 Republicans from Georgia who were deemed alternate electors for the state in the 2020 election.

Judge Robert McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County ruled that Shafer played a “substantively” different role than the other 10 electors.

McBurney ruled that attorneys Holly Pierson and Kimberly Debrow may either represent Shafer or the 10 other alternate electors, but not both.

“His fate with the special purpose grand jury (and beyond) is not tethered to the other ten electors in the same manner in which those ten find themselves connected,” McBurney wrote in his ruling (pdf).

“This imbalance in exposure to the District Attorney’s investigation makes it impractical and arguably unethical for Pierson and Debrow to represent all eleven together.”

Judge Says Shafer ‘Played a Greater Role’

The judge’s ruling comes after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, argued there was a non-waiveable conflict of interest for Pierson and Debrow to represent the 10 alternate electors plus Shafer.

The judge disagreed in part and agreed in part, noting in his ruling that each elector had signed an informed consent form to allow Pierson and Debrow to represent them jointly.

“The exception is David Shafer,” McBurney wrote. Based on the information before the court, McBurney said Shafer was “not just another alternate elector.”

McBurney said in his ruling that Shafer played a greater role “in establishing and convening the slate of alternate electors, his communications with other key players in the District Attorney’s investigation, and his role in other post-election efforts to call into question the validity of the official vote count in Georgia.”

For this reason, “the Court finds that he is substantively differently situation from the other ten clients jointly represented by Pierson and Debrow.”

In order to confirm Georgia’s election results for the former president, the alternate electors signed documents announcing that then-President Donald Trump had won reelection and identifying themselves as legitimate electors.

Probe

Willis launched the inquiry early last year, prompted by a leaked January 2021 phone conversation between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump allegedly said that the state’s top election official could “find” the votes required to overturn his defeat.

The investigation’s scope has significantly changed since then. The special grand jury has heard testimony from Raffensperger and a few other state officials. Willis has also been attempting to get Trump advisers and allies to testify.

One aspect of the probe is looking at efforts by Trump and his allies to refuse to certify electoral slates from states where allegations of election fraud were most common after Joe Biden was named the winner.

They contented that then-Vice President Mike Pence was authorized to reject certain election slates under the 12th Amendment.

This effort was mounted while Trump was attempting to decide how to proceed with his accusations of widespread election fraud.

Democrats, especially those on the House Jan. 6 Committee, have asserted that Trump conducted a coordinated campaign to overturn the 2020 election. This attempt, according to their narrative, resulted in the Capitol breach in 2021, when the certification of the election was disrupted amid protests that turned violent but were mostly peaceful.

The grand jury probe recently paused during the midterms.