ATLANTA — A historic long-winding legal saga in Georgia is in play as Former President Donald Trump is charged with crimes for trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
Now those charges will be battled over in the court. Overseeing that process will be Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court.
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McAfee, selected at random in accordance with the Superior Court's process for assigning judges to cases, is one of the newer judges on the court. He was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp on Feb. 1 to the bench earlier this year - roughly six months later, finding himself in charge of what is almost certainly the most significant case in the history of the Fulton County Superior Court.
He arrived at this point with an extensive legal past in Georgia, described by Kemp previously as a "tough prosecutor."
Before assuming his role on the bench, McAfee was the state inspector general for Georgia. According to his profile at the Georgia Office of the Inspector General website, prior to his stint as inspector general he spent nearly a decade as a prosecutor both for the Department of Justice in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta and in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office.
As a senior assistant district attorney in the Fulton County DA's Office, his time as a local prosecutor would have overlapped with current DA Fani Willis' - though it's unclear if the two ever worked closely at any point.
According to his inspector general profile, McAfee made his mark in the Fulton DA's Office prosecuting "hundreds of felony cases ranging from armed robbery to murder." As a federal prosecutor, he "investigated and prosecuted major drug trafficking organizations, fraud and illegal firearms possession."
As inspector general, one of his most notable moments was the office's producing an audit earlier this year than found roughly $6.7 million in pandemic unemployment payments went to full-time state employees who were never unemployed.
McAfee has deep ties in Georgia - he was described in a governor's release in 2021 as a "lifelong Georgian" who grew up in Kennesaw. According to his profile, earned his undergraduate degree at Emory University and his law degree from the University of Georgia. He also worked for former Georgia Supreme Court Justices David Nahmias and Keith Blackwell.
As for his personal interests, the profile notes he majored in music at Emory and had a scholarship to play cello in the school's symphony orchestra. It notes he has also been a volunteer scuba diver at the Georgia Aquarium and captains his tennis team.
When he was named inspector general by Gov. Kemp in March 2021, the governor called him a "strong addition to my administration" whose "experience as a tough prosecutor equips him to search out fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption, and bring those to justice who break the law."
Now it's up to him to oversee the process that will determine if it was a sitting president who broke the law in Georgia.