ATLANTA (AP) — A judge rejected a lawsuit Friday that sought to disqualify Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones from holding office because of the Republican’s participation as an elector for Donald Trump in 2020.
Butts County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson ruled that the four voters who sued couldn’t use the kind of legal action they filed to attack actions Jones took in 2020 while he was a state senator.
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The suit echoed other efforts elsewhere to keep Trump and some of his supporters off ballots and to prosecute people who falsely claimed to be valid Trump electors in states Joe Biden won.
Richard Rose, a civil rights activist who is one of the plaintiffs, said Friday that he had expected Wilson to rule against him and that he anticipates an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Jones “violated his oath of office, because he lied and said he was a duly qualified elector from state of Georgia, which is not true,” Rose said. (Missing word “the” or CQ?)
Jones says the suit is an illegitimate effort by Democrats to unseat him.
“Democrat activists in Georgia are trying to use the legal system to overrule the will of the voters, just like liberal activists in places like Colorado and Maine are trying to do to President Trump,” Jones said in a statement. “I’m glad to see the court throw out this ridiculous political attack.”
The lawsuit came as a decision remains in limbo on whether to prosecute Jones on state charges, due to a lack of a special prosecutor willing to take the case.
The plaintiffs asked a judge in December to declare Jones ineligible to hold office in Georgia, alleging that he violated his oath of office as a state senator by signing his name as a Trump elector. Biden was certified as winning Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in 2020’s election.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of a Colorado court ruling keeping him off the 2024 presidential ballot because of…
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