Breaking down Trump's free speech claims in Georgia election case

Trump and co-defendants ask appeals court to review ruling allowing Fani Willis to stay on Georgia election case

Former President Donald Trump and eight other defendants accused of illegally trying to interfere in the 2020 election in Georgia on Friday submitted a formal application to appeal a judge’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case.

Trump and other defendants had tried to get Willis and her office tossed off the case, saying her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee earlier this month found that there was not a conflict of interest that should force Willis off the case but said that the prosecution was “encumbered by an appearance of impropriety.”

McAfee’s ruling said Willis could continue her prosecution if Wade left the case, and the special prosecutor resigned hours later. Lawyers for Trump and other defendants then asked McAfee to allow them to appeal his ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals, and he granted that request.

The filing of an application with the appeals court is the next step in that process. The Court of Appeals has 45 days to decide whether it will take up the matter.

The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade upended the case for weeks. Intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February, overshadowing the serious allegations in one of four criminal cases against the Republican former president. Trump and 18 others were indicted in August, accused of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn his narrow 2020 presidential election loss to President Biden in Georgia.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis looks on during a hearing at the Fulton County Courthouse on March 1, 2024, in Atlanta.

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The appeal application says McAfee was wrong not to disqualify both Willis and Wade from the case, saying that “providing DA Willis with the option to simply remove Wade confounds logic and is contrary to Georgia law.”

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, said in a statement that the case should have been dismissed and “at a minimum” Willis should have been disqualified from continuing to prosecute it. He said the Court of Appeals should grant the application and consider the merits of the appeal.

A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.

Willis used Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law, an expansive anti-racketeering statute, to charge Trump and the 18 others. Four people charged in the case have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.

McAfee clearly found that Willis’ relationship with Wade and his employment as lead prosecutor in the case created an appearance of impropriety, and his failure to disqualify Willis and her whole office from the case “is plain legal error requiring reversal,” the defense attorneys wrote in their application.

Given the complexity of the case and the number of defendants, the application says, multiple trials will likely be necessary. Failure to disqualify Willis now could require any verdicts to be overturned, and it would be “neither prudent nor efficient” to risk having to go through “this painful, divisive, and expensive process” multiple times, it says.

In his ruling, McAfee cited a lack of appellate guidance on the issue of disqualifying a prosecutor for forensic misconduct, and the appeals court should step in to establish such a precedent, the lawyers argue.

Finally, the defense attorneys argued, it is crucial that prosecutors “remain and appear to be disinterested and impartial” to maintain public faith in the integrity of the judicial system.

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Fulton County DA Fani Willis plans to take a lead role in trying Trump case

Two weeks after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis survived a bid by defense lawyers to have her disqualified from the Georgia election interference case, she has all but taken over the case personally, focusing intensely on legal strategy and getting her team in fighting form for trial.

In a significant move along these lines, according to a source close to her, Willis has decided to play a leading courtroom role herself in the sprawling conspiracy case against Donald Trump and 14 co-defendants.

“I think there are efforts to slow down the train, but the train is coming,” Willis said with characteristic bravado during impromptu remarks to CNN as she was leaving a Georgia Easter egg hunt on March 23.

“I guess my greatest crime is that I had a relationship with a man, but that’s not something I find embarrassing in any way,” she added.

Willis had just endured a lengthy legal soap opera after lawyers for one of the defendants filed a motion on Jan. 8 alleging that she had a clandestine romantic relationship with outside lawyer Nathan Wade, whom she had tapped to lead the case. Over two months of withering testimony and legal argument, Willis had intimate details of her private life publicly aired, her judgment and integrity questioned, and saw the most high-stakes prosecution of her career teeter on the brink of collapse because of an indiscretion in her personal life.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in court in Atlanta, Georgia, on Friday, March 1, 2024.

Alex Slitz/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In the end, Judge Scott McAfee ruled there was no actual conflict of interest that would have required disqualification of Willis and her entire office from the case. But he did conclude that Willis’ conduct created an “appearance of impropriety” that needed to be “cured” for her to continue. The solution was for Wade to resign from the case, which he did a few hours after the judge’s ruling.

Instead of replacing Wade with another lawyer from inside or outside the office, Willis is stepping up her own role in quarterbacking the case, CBS News has learned. She has already plunged into the nuts and bolts of trial strategy, including starting to lay out how evidence, including witnesses and documents, will be presented, a process known as “order of proof.”

At the same time, she is thinking about how to communicate the stakes of a case about protecting the democratic rights of Georgians — a far more abstract concept than typical murder or gang prosecutions — to a Fulton County jury.

Moreover, according to one knowledgeable source, Willis will now be the primary point of contact for defense lawyers in any future plea negotiations, a role that Wade had previously played.

Perhaps most consequentially, she is gaming out her own role in trying the case. Her appearance in the courtroom will not just be symbolic. Willis is seriously considering handling opening statements for the prosecution and examining key witnesses herself, according to sources familiar with her thinking, who requested anonymity to speak freely about her approach to the case.

Those who know the pugnacious and competitive DA well say a star turn in the courtroom — in the only case against Trump that will be televised — may put the distracting disqualification drama fully behind her. They say she is intent on shifting the public’s focus back onto Trump and his co-defendants for their alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election. It was a strategy she already showcased when she testified combatively in the disqualification hearing last month.

“You’re confused, you think I’m on trial,” she told defense lawyer Ashley Merchant. “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election.”

Willis’ stepped-up, high-profile public role in the case would also come as she runs for reelection in Fulton County. While it seems unlikely the trial would begin before the general election in November, she will likely have opportunities to argue pre-trial motions and procedural matters before then.

Any remarks about the case she makes inside the courtroom carry far less risk than whatever she might be tempted to say in the public arena, where she feels less restrained. She has already been admonished by McAfee for making “unorthodox” public remarks. The judge has hinted that he might impose a gag order on the case.

“Given the fact that she just barely walked away legally unscathed and that there is an appeal, I think a little extra caution would pay off dividends,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor of law at Georgia State College of Law, who has been following the election interference case closely. But at the same time, Kreis said Willis has every “right and prerogative” to try the case herself and called doing so a potential “rehabilitation moment.”

Willis was always likely to play at least some public-facing role in the trial, if for no other reason than to show her constituents how seriously she was taking a case that she regards as core to their rights as Americans and Georgians, according to a close friend of Willis’. But it was only after going through the searing two-month disqualification ordeal that she decided to play a leading, if not the leading trial role, sources tell CBS News.

Willis earned a reputation as a courtroom practitioner over a two-decade career of trying and winning hundreds of murder, rape and gang cases, but also leading some of the most complex prosecutions ever brought in Georgia. Chief among them was the Atlanta Public Schools cheating case, a Georgia RICO prosecution — involving the same conspiracy statute under which Trump and his co-defendants were charged — against more than a dozen teachers, principals and administrators. All but one of the 12 defendants who went to trial were convicted in what still stands as the longest trial in Georgia history.

“She combines a level of preparation unmatched by any attorney I have ever seen, with a very rare ability to connect with a jury at that gut level,” said Charley Bailey, a former Fulton County assistant DA who has tried cases with Willis and is a close friend.

Daniel Klaidman

Daniel Klaidman, an investigative reporter based in New York, is the former editor-in-chief of Yahoo News and former managing editor of Newsweek. He has over two decades of experience covering politics, foreign affairs, national security and law.

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Trump, co-defendants ask appeals court to consider booting DA Fani Willis from Georgia case

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and eight of his co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case on Friday asked a state appeals court to allow them to challenge a recent ruling that didn’t disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting the case.

“The Georgia Court of Appeals should grant the application and accept the interlocutory appeal for consideration on the merits,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in Georgia, told NBC News in a statement Friday.

Willis’ office declined NBC News’ request for comment.

The application comes after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee gave Trump and the others permission to seek a review from the Georgia Court of Appeals of McAfee’s decision not to disqualify Willis and her office and dismiss the charges in the sprawling racketeering case.

In a motion originally filed by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, and later adopted by Trump and others, Willis is accused of financially benefitting from a personal relationship she had with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she’d appointed to the case. The motion alleged Willis and Wade took vacations together while working on the case.

Willis and Wade denied any wrongdoing. They acknowledged they’d been in a relationship, but they maintained that it began after his appointment as special prosecutor and that Willis did not benefit financially.

In a decision earlier this month, McAfee found no conflict of interest but said because of an “appearance of impropriety,” either Willis and her office would have to step aside, or Wade.

Wade resigned shortly after McAfee’s ruling — but, Sadow noted, the defense wanted the order to go further.

“Defendants argues in the trial court that the indictment should have been dismissed and, at a minimum, DA Willis and her office should have been disqualified from prosecuting the case,” Sadow’s statement said.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case, which alleges he conspired with others to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.

With the request officially filed, the appeals court has 45 days to decide whether to take up the case. McAfee has said he will not halt proceedings in the Georgia case as the disqualification matter makes its way through the appeals court.

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Georgia legislature passes broad elections bill with 2024 implications

The GOP-controlled Georgia legislature on Thursday passed a wide-ranging elections measure that would expand access for candidates to appear on the state’s presidential ballot and would broaden abilities to challenge voter eligibility.

The House and Senate passed Senate Bill 189, which combined several previously separate election bills, sending it to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk. It was passed as the state’s two-year legislative session ended Friday.

The legislation could have immediate implications for the 2024 presidential election in the crucial battleground state.

Under the bill, any political party or political body could qualify for the presidential ballot if it already has gained access to the ballot in at least 20 states or territories.

The new provision could help independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is trying to appear on the ballot in all 50 states this November. He has so far only collected enough signatures to qualify on about a handful of ballots including Hawaii, Nevada, New Hampshire and Utah.

All of Georgia’s unhoused people will need to redo their voter registrations to comply with the law, too, as a provision in the bill requires those without a permanent address to register at the registrar’s office in the county where they reside. Previously, registered voters without permanent addresses have registered at shelters or government offices, including courthouses.

The bill also includes provisions that may make it easier for amateur voter fraud hunters to successfully challenge other voters’ registrations, by listing out details on what would substantiate the “probable cause” needed to uphold such a challenge.

Probable cause can now include an elector being registered at a nonresidential address as confirmed or listed by or in a government office, database, website, or publicly available sources derived solely from such government sources. A voter’s appearance in the USPS change-of-address database is not evidence alone of a voter’s ineligibility, the law notes, but could be used to help substantiate a challenge.

In 2021, Georgia lawmakers encouraged amateur voter fraud hunters by writing into the election code that residents could make an unlimited number of challenges. Since then, a handful of individuals have challenged tens of thousands of voter registrations, overwhelming election officials with research. One man developed a database, Eagle AI, that amateur fraud hunters pore over the voter rolls and search for potentially ineligible voters, like people registered at nonresidential buildings.

America’s voter rolls are built for registration, not removal, which means they may often include outdated voter registrations. Election officials have years-long procedures for removing outdated voter registrations, too. And while there’s no evidence that bloated voter rolls lead to fraud, officials and election experts warn that amateur fraud hunters may use discriminatory strategies to search for voters or that inaccurate data or typos might knock eligible voters off the roles.

“These mass voter challenges time and again disproportionately try and throw Black and Brown voters off the rolls. They have been a strategy for a long time to have a chilling effect on voting,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, interim CEO of Fair Fight Action.

Republicans, she said, are “looking for opportunities to shave off the votes of folks who are likely to vote for Democrat.”

State Rep. Al Williams, a Democrat, said the bill was designed to suppress voters of color, and part of the “foolishness” he fought against during the Civil Rights Movement.

“It’s straight out the old playbook of a nationally-coordinated right-wing effort to just make access to the ballot impossible,” he said.

Republicans defended the bill in the legislature, arguing it will improve voter rolls.

State Rep. John LaHood, a Republican, said the bill increases confidence in elections.

“What this bill does is ensure that your legal vote does matter,” he said.

Lawmakers also wrapped in proposals that would remove the secretary of state from Georgia’s election board, ban QR codes on voter ballots in future elections and require counties to report absentee ballot votes within one hour of polls closing.

The ACLU said in a statement Friday that it “strongly opposes this bill,” vowing to sue the governor if he signs the measure into law.

“Access to the ballot is at the heart of our democracy,” said ACLU of Georgia executive director Andrea Young. “This election ‘Frankenbill’ violates the National Voter Registration Act. We are committed to protecting Georgia voters. If the governor signs this bill, we will see him in court.”

Georgia Republicans have worked to pass new election rules in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss to Joe Biden.

Trump and his supporters have repeatedly blamed voter fraud for his loss. Their efforts to challenge the election results in Georgia led to the criminal case against him and over a dozen co-defendants.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and his co-defendants last year with violating Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) Act.

A trial date has not yet been set in the case, though Willis has made clear she’s interested in an August start date.

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Georgia joins states seeking parental permission before children join social media

ATLANTA — Georgia could join other states in requiring children younger than 16 to have their parents’ explicit permission to create social media accounts.

Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to Senate Bill 351, which also would ban social media use on school devices and internet services, require porn sites to verify users are 18 or over and mandate additional education by schools on social media and internet use. The House passed the measure 120-45 and the Senate approved it 48-7.

The bill, which Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte of Dallas called “transformative,” now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature or veto.

A number of other states including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Utah passed laws last year requiring parental consent for children to use social media. In Arkansas, a federal judge in August blocked enforcement of a law requiring parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts.

Some in Congress also are proposing parental consent for minors.

State Rep. Scott Hilton, a Peachtree Corners Republican, argued the state should do more to limit social media use by children, saying it’s causing harm.

“Every rose has a thorn, and that’s social media in this generation,” Hilton said. “It’s great for connectivity and activism, but it has reared its ugly head on mental health.”

But opponents warned the bill would cause problems. For example, Rep. David Wilkerson, a Powder Springs Democrat, said that the ban on use of social media in schools could ban teachers from showing educationally valuable YouTube videos.

“If we do pass this, we’ll be back fixing this next year, because there are too many issues with this bill,” Wilkerson said.

The bill says social media services would have to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify someone’s age by July 1, 2025.

Services would have to treat anyone who can’t be verified as a minor. Parents of children younger than 16 would have to consent to their children joining a service. Social medial companies would be limited in how they could customize ads for children younger than 16 and how much information they could collect on those children.

To comply with federal regulation, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms, but children have been shown to easily evade the bans.

Up to 95% of teens aged 13 to 17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use them “almost constantly,” the Pew Research Center found.

The Georgia bill also aims to shut down porn sites by requiring submission of a digitized identification card or some other government-issued identification. Companies could be held liable if minors were found to access the sites, and could face fines of up to $10,000.

“It will protect our children,” said Rep. Rick Jasperse, a Jasper Republican who argues age verification will lead porn sites to cut off access to Georgians. In March, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law, leading Pornhub to cut off access to Texans.

The Free Speech Coalition, which represents adult film makers, says the bill would be ineffective because users could mask their location and because people would be forced to transmit sensitive information. They also argue it’s unconstitutional because there are less restrictive ways to keep children out and discriminate against certain types of speech. The coalition has sued multiple states over the laws.

The ban on school social media excludes email, news, gaming, online shopping, photograph editing and academic sites. The measure also requires a model program on the effects of social media and for students in grades 6-12, and requires existing anti-bullying programs to be updated.

The move comes after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in May that social media hasn’t been proven to be safe for young people.

Murthy called on tech companies, parents and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now” and asked tech companies to share data and increase transparency and for policymakers to regulate social media for safety the way they do car seats and baby formula.

Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instragram, announced in 2022 it was taking steps to verify ages. Meta says it provides “age-appropriate experiences” for teens 13-17 on Instagram, including preventing unwanted contact from unknown adults.

Dozens of U.S. states, including California and New York, also are suing Meta Platforms Inc., claiming the company harms young people and contributes to a youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.

Florida recently passed a law banning social media accounts for children under 14 regardless of parental consent and require parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds.

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Georgia Republican Party official voted illegally nine times, judge rules

A judge ruled this week that a top Georgia Republican Party official, who has promoted former President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud affecting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, has repeatedly voted illegally.

Brian Pritchard, first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and conservative talk show host, was fined $5,000 for voting illegally and registering to vote while serving a sentence for a felony conviction. Pritchard was also ordered not to commit further violations, to face public reprimand for his conduct, and to pay the State Election Board’s investigative costs.

Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs affirmed in a 25-page ruling on Wednesday the board’s finding that Pritchard had voted illegally nine times in defiance of his extended probation in connection with a pair of felony convictions dating back nearly 30 years.

Pritchard was initially sentenced in 1996 to three years’ probation in connection with felony forgery charges in Pennsylvania, according to the ruling.

Pritchard’s probation was revoked three times, including in 1999, when he moved to Georgia, and again in 2002 and 2004. A judge in 2004 imposed a new seven-year probationary sentence, which made Pritchard illegible to vote in the state until 2011.

In 2008, Pritchard filled out a voter registration form with Gilmer County’s Board of Elections and signed a sworn statement asserting that he was “not serving a sentence for having been convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude.” Pritchard cast a series of Georgia ballots, including four that year in primary and general elections and runoffs, and another five in 2010 in special elections, primaries, and the general election.

Pritchard testified that “he was not aware of anything that would have prevented him from registering to vote when he signed the application” and that he didn’t believe three years of probation remained in his sentence, according to court documents.

Boggs said in Wednesday’s ruling that “upon careful consideration of the evidence in its totality the Court does not find the Respondent’s explanations credible or convincing. At the very least, even if the Court accepts he did not know about his felony sentences, the record before this Court demonstrates that he should have known.”

An attorney for Pritchard and the Georgia Republican Party did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on Thursday night.

A questionnaire filled out by Pritchard when he was running for first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party last year said that he sought to “leverage the influence of the grassroots conservative movement to improve election integrity.”

Before becoming the state party’s first vice chairman, Pritchard was defeated in a special election for a state House seat held by Speaker David Ralston last year.

While running for that seat, he blasted news stories surfacing around his voting record, suggesting in a 2022 post on his website that his detractors “want to try to manipulate an election and try to make me look like public enemy number one.”

Pritchard has also cast doubt over President Joe Biden legitimately winning the 2020 presidential election, saying during an episode of his talk show in 2022, while gesturing at a button on his microphone, “The button says ‘stolen.’ This is what they did to us because I do not believe 81 million people voted for this guy.”

Zoë Richards

Dareh Gregorian contributed.

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Breaking down Trump’s free speech claims in Georgia election case

Breaking down Trump’s free speech claims in Georgia election case – CBS News

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A judge in the Georgia 2020 election case heard arguments Thursday over whether former President Donald Trump’s First Amendment rights shield him from prosecution. CBS News campaign reporter Katrina Kaufman joins “America Decides” with key takeaways.

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Georgia judge hears Trump’s First Amendment claim in election interference case

Georgia judge hears Trump’s First Amendment claim in election interference case – CBS News

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Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers argue his Fulton County election interference case should be dismissed because the acts he is charged with are protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment. CBS News campaign reporter Katrina Kaufman has the latest on the case.

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Ahmaud Arbery’s killers ask appeals court to overturn their hate crime convictions

Attorneys are asking a U.S. appeals court to throw out the hate crime convictions of three White men who used pickup trucks to chase Ahmaud Arbery through the streets of a Georgia subdivision before one of them killed the running Black man with a shotgun.

A panel of judges from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that followed a national outcry over Arbery’s death. The men’s lawyers argue that evidence of past racist comments they made didn’t prove a racist intent to harm.

On Feb. 23, 2020, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and drove in pursuit of Arbery after spotting the 25-year-old man running in their neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery in the street.

More than two months passed without arrests, until Bryan’s graphic video of the killing leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. Charges soon followed.

All three men were convicted of murder in a Georgia state court in late 2021. After a second trial in early 2022 in federal court, a jury found the trio guilty of hate crimes and attempted kidnapping, concluding the men targeted Arbery because he was Black.

In legal briefs filed ahead of their appeals court arguments, lawyers for Greg McMichael and Bryan cited prosecutors’ use of more than two dozen social media posts and text messages, as well as witness testimony, that showed all three men using racist slurs or otherwise disparaging Black people. The slurs often included the use of the N-word and other derogatory terms for Black people, according to an FBI witness who examined the men’s social media pages. The men had also advocated for violence against Black people, the witness said.

Bryan’s attorney, Pete Theodocion, said Bryan’s past racist statements inflamed the trial jury while failing to prove that Arbery was pursued because of his race. Instead, Arbery was chased because the three men mistakenly suspected he was a fleeing criminal, according to A.J. Balbo, Greg McMichael’s lawyer.

Greg McMichael initiated the chase when Arbery ran past his home, saying he recognized the young Black man from security camera videos that in prior months showed him entering a neighboring home under construction. None of the videos showed him stealing, and Arbery was unarmed and had no stolen property when he was killed.

Prosecutors said in written briefs that the trial evidence showed “longstanding hate and prejudice toward Black people” influenced the defendants’ assumptions that Arbery was committing crimes.

“All three of these defendants did everything they did based on assumptions — not on fact, not on evidence, on assumptions. They make decisions in their driveways based on those assumptions that took a young man’s life,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said in court in November 2021.

Three men found guilty of hate crimes in the death of Ahmaud Arbery

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In Travis McMichael’s appeal, attorney Amy Lee Copeland didn’t dispute the jury’s finding that he was motivated by racism. The social media evidence included a 2018 Facebook comment Travis McMichael made on a video of Black man playing a prank on a white person. He used an expletive and a racial slur after he wrote wrote: “I’d kill that …. .”

Instead, Copeland based her appeal on legal technicalities. She said that prosecutors failed to prove the streets of the Satilla Shores subdivision where Arbery was killed were public roads, as stated in the indictment used to charge the men.

Copeland cited records of a 1958 meeting of Glynn County commissioners in which they rejected taking ownership of the streets from the subdivision’s developer. At the trial, prosecutors relied on service request records and testimony from a county official to show the streets have been maintained by the county government.

Attorneys for the trio also made technical arguments for overturning their attempted kidnapping convictions. Prosecutors said the charge fit because the men used pickup trucks to cut off Arbery’s escape from the neighborhood.

Defense attorneys said the charge was improper because their clients weren’t trying to capture Arbery for ransom or some other benefit, and the trucks weren’t used as an “instrumentality of interstate commerce.” Both are required elements for attempted kidnapping to be a federal crime.

From left: Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan are seen during their trial in Brunswick, Georgia. All three were convicted of murder in the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

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Prosecutors said other federal appellate circuits have ruled that any automobile used in a kidnapping qualifies as an instrument of interstate commerce. And they said the benefit the men sought was “to fulfill their personal desires to carry out vigilante justice.”

The trial judge sentenced both McMichaels to life in prison for their hate crime convictions, plus additional time — 10 years for Travis McMichael and seven years for his father — for brandishing guns while committing violent crimes. Bryan received a lighter hate crime sentence of 35 years in prison, in part because he wasn’t armed and preserved the cellphone video that became crucial evidence.

All three also got 20 years in prison for attempted kidnapping, but the judge ordered that time to overlap with their hate crime sentences.

If the U.S. appeals court overturns any of their federal convictions, both McMichaels and Bryan would remain in prison. All three are serving life sentences in Georgia state prisons for murder, and have motions for new state trials pending before a judge.

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Georgia running back Trevor Etienne arrested on DUI and reckless driving charges

ATLANTA — Georgia running back Trevor Etienne was arrested early Sunday on drunken driving, reckless driving and other charges, jail records show.

Etienne, the Bulldogs’ projected starting running back, was booked into the Athens-Clark County Jail at 4:35 a.m. and released less than an hour later on bonds totalling about $1,800. The other charges include failure to maintain a lane or improper driving as well as affixing materials that reduce visibility through the windows or windshield, according to the records.

It was not immediately clear if Etienne had obtained a lawyer.

The university said in a statement it was aware of the arrest but would not have further comment.

Etienne, 19, is a midyear transfer from Florida, where he led the Gators with nine touchdowns last year and emerged as one of the team’s most dynamic playmakers. The younger brother of former Clemson star and Jacksonville Jaguars running back Travis Etienne, he has two years of eligibility remaining.

Coach Kirby Smart acknowledged last year that he had been struggling to find ways to get his players to drive safely. In January 2023 — hours after Georgia celebrated its second-straight national title — offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy were killed in a crash while LeCroy and defensive tackle Jalen Carter were racing.

There were at least 15 traffic stops involving members of the Bulldogs’ football program driving excessive speeds in 2023, including three instances of driving under the influence, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Team policy requires that athletes convicted of DUI serve a suspension of at least one game. Georgia’s season-opening contest will be against Clemson on Aug. 31.

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