(Headline USA) Georgia’s Republican Senate Caucus is suspending a GOP state senator who criticized them for opposing his plan to impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her partisan lawfare campaign against former President Donald Trump and 18 codefendants who sought to challenge the state’s disputed 2020 election results.
The caucus announced Thursday that it was indefinitely suspending state Sen. Colton Moore of Trenton, who represents a district in Georgia’s northwest corner.
“Sen. Moore has a right to his opinion,” the caucus said in a statement. “However, during his advocacy for his ill-conceived proposal, Sen. Moore has knowingly misled people across Georgia and our nation, causing unnecessary tension and hostility, while putting his caucus colleagues and their families at risk of personal harm,” claimed the group, which has 32 of the Georgia Senate’s 56 members.
Moore slammed his colleagues as fake Republicans disloyal to the party leader and helping carry water for a partisan Democrat agenda intent on keeping Trump out of office.
“The Georgia RINOs responded to my call to fight back against the Trump witch hunts by acting like children and throwing me out of the caucus,” Moore tweeted. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
Statement Regarding the Indefinite Caucus Suspension of Senator Colton Moore#gapol pic.twitter.com/tPZhlYyiY0
— GA Senate Republicans (@GASenateGOP) September 28, 2023
It’s the latest display of a divide between Gov. Brian Kemp and his allies, on the one hand, and grassroots Trump backers who comprise the majority of Georgia’s Republican Party organization.
After his daughter’s boyfriend, 20-year-old Harrison Deal, died mysteriously in a fiery car crash in December 2020, Kemp suddenly withdrew his support from Trump’s efforts to challenge the election outcome, while insisting that there was nothing suspicious about Deal’s tragic accident and demanding privacy.
Eyewitness testimony sounds so awful, mentioning hearing multiple explosions. It also appears that Harrison Deal was pulled off to the side of the road beyond the shoulder with at least two other vehicles. I hope Chatham county does a thorough investigation https://t.co/rHWP1v99Bc pic.twitter.com/7pqcLpW96Q
— Geoffrey Joynt (@JoyntGeoffrey) December 5, 2020
Willis has since charged Trump and 18 others, including the former state Republican Party chair, with crimes related to the effort. All have pleaded not guilty.
Moore will still be a member of the Senate and will still be a Republican, but may find it hard to pass legislation without support of the majority caucus. But he already often functioned like a party of one in the body, voting against measures that all other Republicans or all other senators supported.
Moore was the most prominent backer of a special session to impeach and remove Willis or defund her office, winning Trump’s endorsement.
Kemp denounced the call as “some grifter scam” to raise campaign contributions for Moore, in a news conference that was unusually impassioned for the buttoned-up governor.
Kemp called the push “political theater that only inflames the emotions of the moment,” saying a special session “would ignore current Georgia law and directly interfere with the proceedings of a separate but equal branch of government.”
Kemp said he didn’t think Willis had done anything to merit removal.
Moore launched a petition for lawmakers to call themselves into special session, requiring signatures by three-fifths of both houses. That would require some Democratic support because Republicans have a less than 60% majority in each chamber. And the Senate would have required a two-thirds vote to remove Willis after the House impeached her.
As a Georgia State Senator, I am officially calling for an emergency session to review the actions of Fani Willis.
America is under attack. I’m not going to sit back and watch as radical left prosecutors politically TARGET political opponents. pic.twitter.com/gpzg2l5uIU
— Sen. Colton Moore (@realColtonMoore) August 17, 2023
Moore never got close to persuading fellow Republicans, much less Democrats, winning the signatures of one Republican House member and one other Republican senator.
However, Moore attacked some other state senators. After Republican state Sens. Bo Hatchett and Shelly Echols issued a joint statement criticizing Moore’s call, they said Moore targeted them for retaliation and they received threats.
The caucus claimed Moore violated internal rules and was suspended by Republican leaders after refusing to follow those rules. The caucus claimed Moore was not being retaliated against for “his wrongheaded policy position.”
Some other Georgia Republicans have freely attacked Willis, including U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“Fani Willis should be ashamed of herself and she’s going to lose her job. We’ll make sure of that,” Greene told reporters outside the Fulton County Jail, shortly before Trump arrived by motorcade to submit to booking and a mug shot.
Despite Moore getting the boot, some Republican state senators are backing a plan to seek Willis’s removal by a new state prosecutorial oversight commission.
The Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission is supposed to begin work sometime after Oct. 1, when the state Supreme Court approves its rules. The body was created with the aim of disciplining or removing wayward prosecutors.
Some district attorneys, not including Willis, are already suing to overturn the law, saying it improperly infringes on their authority.
Kemp, while criticizing the timing of the Trump indictment, has said he hasn’t seen any evidence that the commission should discipline or remove Willis.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
