by Ty Tagami | Sep 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday shut the door on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ election interference case against Donald Trump and his supporters.
The high court, in a 4-3 vote, declined to consider Willis’ appeal after the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified her from prosecuting conspiracy charges against Trump and eight others. The appeals court found an appearance of impropriety in her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she had assigned to the case.
Three of the judges in the Supreme Court majority concurred that the Willis case was so unique that her appeal was “a poor vehicle” for establishing precedent on when to disqualify a prosecutor for misconduct. (Two of the nine justices did not vote in Tuesday’s decision.)
The state Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council could take over the cases, as it did in a related one involving Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Willis had targeted Jones along with Trump and the other co-defendants, but a judge disqualified her from that investigation. A special prosecutor took up the Jones investigation and decided not to prosecute him.
The court decision sidelining Willis from investigating Jones came after she hosted a fundraiser for a Democrat who was running against Jones for lieutenant governor.
Jones is now running to be the Republican nominee for Governor, with Trump’s endorsement. Jones accused Willis of weaponizing the justice system for political gain.
“The Supreme Court just shut Fani Willis down. Her political circus is OVER,” Jones’ campaign said in a statement. “Today justice is served for Georgia, and justice is served for President Trump.”
Jones and fellow Republicans are now pursuing Willis, setting up a Senate committee to investigate her investigation of election interference.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Geoff Duncan, Georgia’s former Republican lieutenant governor, is running for governor as a Democrat, putting financial security and political moderation at the center of his campaign.
Duncan says in a brief YouTube video that he wants “to make Georgia the front line of Democracy and a backstop against extremism.”
He puts President Donald Trump in the extremist camp.
Duncan has been jabbing at Trump for years, attracting the president’s ire by rejecting his assertions that he had won the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
In 2021, Duncan published the book, “GOP 2.0,” which urged a pivot from Trump’s brand of politics.
Since then, he has shared his anti-Trump message as a commentator on CNN and as a columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In January, after he had endorsed Kamala Harris’ failed campaign for president, the Georgia Republican Party expelled him.
“By his pattern of conduct, Duncan has forfeited any claim to being even a nominal ‘Republican,’ ” the state GOP’s executive committee wrote in a resolution that was passed unanimously by its members.
In his YouTube announcement, which appeared on the platform Monday, Duncan welcomes attacks from Trump, calling them “a badge of honor.”
Duncan also focuses on family finances. He says he wants to help moms who cannot return to work because of skyrocketing child care costs and families that must choose between paying for medicine and food.
He will be contesting three leading Democrats for that party’s nomination: Jason Esteves, who announced last week that he was stepping down from his Atlanta-based state senate seat to focus on his campaign; former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; and Michael Thurmond, who has been elected statewide as labor commissioner, has served in the General Assembly, and recently ended his second four-year term as the elected CEO of DeKalb County.
Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary will face the winner of the Republican nomination, where state Attorney General Chris Carr is campaigning against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was recently endorsed by Trump.
by Ty Tagami | Sep 15, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A half dozen landowners who filed a lawsuit that might have halted development of the massive Rivian auto plant near Social Circle do not have to pay some of the legal costs spent by the state to defend the project.
Lawyers hired by Georgia and by a local development authority asked a judge in Morgan County to make the landowners pay for the taxpayer dollars Georgia paid them, arguing that the plaintiffs had brought a frivolous lawsuit.
But the judge ruled against the state, determining that the suit was an earnest attempt to determine whether Georgia officials had the authority to waive local land use rules for a private development project on public land.
The state bypassed the agricultural zoning for the 2,000-acre property by purchasing it, then leasing it to the Joint Development Authority for Morgan and nearby counties, which in turn leased it to electric automaker Rivian.
Nearby landowners sued, asking whether a for-profit corporation that makes automobiles on public land was a “governmental purpose” that would trigger legal immunity.
The court decision means the landowners do not have to pay the state’s legal costs of $338,000 in the Morgan County lawsuit.
“It would have been financially devastating for these people,” one of the landowners’ attorneys, John Christy, said Monday.
The state has filed a similar motion in a related case in Fulton County, where it is seeking to recover another $203,000 in legal costs, Christy said.
The state could push forward with its motion for legal costs in the Fulton County case and it could appeal the Morgan County decision.
A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Economic Development did not answer questions about the state’s next legal steps, responding instead with a statement about the Rivian project.
Rivian will soon break ground on its plant construction, said the joint statement with the local development authority. This “marks the beginning of a generational project that will bring long-term economic opportunity” to the region and the state, the statement said.
The courts have consistently sided with the state and the local authority, the statement added, “and this ruling doesn’t change the status of the Rivian project.”
Christy thinks the judge issued a “well-reasoned and thoughtful” order that will discourage an appeal by the state and to dismissal of the Fulton County demand for legal costs.
“I think that any appeal would be frivolous,” he said. “I think the standard on appeal would be very high.”
Morgan County Superior Court Judge Stephen Bradley wrote in an 11-page order filed Friday that the state’s claim about a frivolous lawsuit was undermined by its own actions.
The state voluntarily joined the case as a defendant, hiring a large team of lawyers, the judge wrote. This signaled an expectation for “a much more pitched battle in the case,” he added.
Bradley also noted that a lawyer for the local development authority — a co-defendant in the case — had displayed apparent “misgivings” about whether the state’s sovereign immunity would transfer to the Rivian project.
The authority’s lawyer had explained in court that she was withdrawing applications for a change in local restrictions because it would have required 34 public hearings, the judge wrote, adding that he interpreted this as a tacit admission that the law governing the matter was unclear.
“Neither the first nor the second suit filed by the plaintiffs were based on bad faith or were short of justiciable issue,” Bradley wrote, explaining why he sided against the state in what he said was an unprecedented case. “The issues presented concerning governmental land use regulations and public immunity, specifically focusing on the basis of that immunity — particularly the potential use of sovereign immunity to shield a private, for-profit corporation — raise new and unanswered questions of law.”
Bradley wrote that the way the government has handled the property in this transaction seems “clearly designed to circumvent resistance from local voices opposing the Rivian Project.”
by Ty Tagami | Sep 15, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — It was another boom year for Georgia, as businesses continued flocking to the state, burnishing its record as the No. 1 place to do business.
A record-breaking $26.3 billion flowed into the Peach State for the fiscal year that ended June 30, as companies expanded or established new locations. That is according to the office of Gov. Brian Kemp, which said the growth will translate to 23,300 new private-sector jobs over the next few years.
Area Development magazine has consistently ranked Georgia as the top state for business.
Kemp credited the state Department of Economic Development with fostering an attractive business environment. The state has supplied over $18 million to help rural communities prepare new industrial sites through its Rural Site Development Initiative, Kemp’s office said. There are now more than 70 certified sites.
Kemp said the effort “will pay off for generations.”
Company expansions at existing locations were the major driver, with 77% of the growth occurring outside metro Atlanta. But the 10-county Atlanta region remains a business hub, hosting major companies such as Duracell and Mercedes-Benz.
International investment was a major reason for the continued growth, with more than 6,500 jobs coming from expansions or new locations at companies from countries such as the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Canada.
State lawmakers pledged to continue collaborating with the Kemp administration, crediting the state’s ports, railways, energy systems and other infrastructure — and higher education.
“We continue to invest in workforce programs to ensure a steady talent pipeline with our existing industry partners,” Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said. “These investments and initiatives will ensure we have a workforce that is growing and able to meet skillsets for jobs of today and tomorrow.”
by Dave Williams | Sep 12, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – It’s been nearly a year since Hurricane Helene tore through a large swath of South Georgia during the last week of September, killing 37 and causing widespread flooding and power outages.
While blocked roads have long been cleared and power restored, Georgia farmers and foresters are still waiting for a full measure of disaster relief to replant crops and trees lost to the storm.
But Georgia elected officials say help is finally on the way. The state Department of Agriculture is working with its federal counterpart on a block grant that should go a long way toward putting farmers, ranchers, and timber owners on the road to recovery.
“It seems like it’s down to the attorneys dotting the ‘i’s’ and crossing the ‘t’s’ ” said Will Bentley, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council.
Georgia’s ag industry needs a lot of relief. Helene wreaked at least $5.5 billion in damage to crops, ranches, poultry houses, orchards, and timberland.
“At that time of year, cotton was close to being picked,” Bentley said. “The pecan industry was devastated. … We lost hundreds of poultry houses. It’s been hard to build back.”
Congress moved quickly by its usually plodding standards, passing a bipartisan relief package last December that earmarked $21 billion in relief to farmers who suffered losses from Helene in Georgia and other affected states. The federal package also was in response to other natural disasters across the country.
At the state level, Gov. Brian Kemp redirected $100 million from a capital projects fund to provide financial support for farmers affected by the storm and debris cleanup for owners of damaged timberland. Then in March, the General Assembly set aside $867 million for disaster relief as part of the fiscal 2025 mid-year budget.
But farmers and timber owners still are far from being made whole. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., complained in a letter in July to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tyler Harper that the block grant was taking too long to negotiate.
“Although some funds have been made available at the national level through USDA, many of Georgia’s farmers and producers who were most affected by Hurricane Helene are not eligible for this assistance and tell me they are instead counting on a block grant,” Ossoff wrote.
On a separate front, Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., pushed back against Trump administration efforts in March to cut some disaster recovery programs Warnock said were particularly critical following Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which rampaged through Florida less than two weeks after Helene.
“When Hurricane Helene struck Georgia, my office got to work helping our communities recover by delivering supplies at the local level and advocating for support at the federal level,” Warnock said Thursday. “It has been a particular priority to advocate for our farmers and foresters who have been devastated by worsening storms.”
Harper said the block grant process has been slow in part because federal and state negotiators had to start from scratch.
“The whole purpose of the block grant is to cover things that aren’t usually covered,” Harper said Friday. “We’ve had to create new programs in a short period of time and justify the amount we’re asking for.”
At the same time, Harper said the pace of relief following Helene compares favorably to disaster aid efforts after Hurricane Michael hit South Georgia in 2018.
“This is the fastest aid has ever been distributed after a hurricane,” Harper told an audience of political and agribusiness leaders last month at the annual Ag Issues Summit at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry. “We’re still nine months ahead of Hurricane Michael.”
Harper told members of the Georgia House Rural Development Committee meeting in Douglas Wednesday that his agency has hired staff to work with farmers who want to apply for federal relief funds once the block grant has been finalized.
“We’re ready to press the go-button,” he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to push this out so individuals know where they can sign up and what the application process looks like. … Time is of the essence.”
