Since the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump and 18 of his allies last summer on allegations of election interference in Georgia, a delicate question has remained unanswered: Would there also be criminal charges against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a longtime Trump supporter and one of the most ambitious politicians in the southern swing state?

Mr. Jones was one of 16 Republicans who acted as fake electors for Mr. Trump in Georgia in an effort to overturn his 2020 defeat. Three of them are charged with crimes, including violating the state’s racketeering law.

But in 2022, a judge blocked the Fulton County district attorney who led the investigation, Fani T. Willis, from developing a case against Mr. Jones, citing a conflict of interest because she had led a fundraising campaign for his Democratic rival in the United States. the race for lieutenant governor.

It is now up to a government agency called the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find a special prosecutor to investigate Mr. Jones, who has denied any wrongdoing. The agency’s head, Peter J. Skandalakis, has said little about the selection process for months.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Skandalakis, a Republican and former prosecutor, confirmed that he would unilaterally choose the prosecutor for the Jones case. He said he had already excluded some prosecutors because their staffs were too small to take on the extra work or because the choice for them might seem too biased.

This week, the district attorney in Augusta, Georgia, became the first to publicly announce his interest in the job. Jared T. Williams, a Democrat, said in an interview on Tuesday that he was willing to investigate Mr. Jones’ actions after the 2020 election “if called upon to do so.”

Mr. Williams’ announcement underscored the conundrum facing Mr. Skandalakis. Georgia Republicans will likely cry if he chooses a Democrat for the job. But Democrats will likely do the same if he chooses a Republican.

“I don’t deny that it’s a difficult position to be in,” Mr. Skandalakis said, “but that doesn’t bother me. I have been in similar positions before in difficult cases throughout my career.” However, he added that few of these cases had as much potential for partisan fury. Mr. Jones has said that he may run for governor in 2026.

Mr. Skandalakis said he had high regard for Mr. Williams, a first-term prosecutor who ran on a criminal justice reform platform, and would talk to him about the job.

But he also said he was concerned that Mr. Williams had been a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the creation of an oversight board for local prosecutors. Mr Jones, chairman of the Senate, had supported the new committee. The lawsuit was recently dropped by the plaintiffs following a decision by the Georgia Supreme Court effectively hindered the exploitation committee.

Mr Skandalakis said he had already excluded some other plaintiffs because they were plaintiffs in the lawsuit. He declined to name them, but prosecutors included a Republican prosecutor from a central Georgia judicial district, Jonathan Adams, and two Democrats from densely populated suburban districts near Atlanta, Sherry Boston of DeKalb County and Flynn D. .Broady Jr. from Cobb County.

On Wednesday, Clayton County District Attorney Tasha M. Mosley, a Democrat, told the New York Times that Mr. Skandalakis had recently asked if she would be interested in taking the case. Ms Mosley said she declined because her office did not have sufficient resources.

“I can’t fire any more prosecutors from the homicide cases we have here,” she said. “So I would have to hire an external consultant to handle that. And I don’t have the money.”

All fifty of Georgia’s district attorneys are elected through partisan elections. Mr. Skandalakis could try to find a private attorney to handle the case to ease partisan tensions. But the law, he said, would prevent him from paying an outside attorney more than $70 an hour.

“It’s almost insulting to find someone willing to do it for $70 an hour,” he said.

Mr. Skandalakis, 67, can also appoint himself special prosecutor. It would not be the first time that he has led a high-profile case. In 2021, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appointed him to investigate the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks, who fought with two Atlanta officers in 2020 and was shot in the back as he ran away.

Mr. Skandalakis announced in August 2022 that charges against the officers would be dropped.

Mr. Jones did not respond to a call for comment on Wednesday. But in the past he has called the Georgian investigation into election interference a “abuse of power,‘, arguing that people like him are not breaking any laws, but merely ‘asking questions about elections’.

Mr. Jones, 44, is the scion of a wealthy Georgian family who often reminds voters that he is a former captain of the University of Georgia football team. He belongs to the pro-Trump faction of the Republican Party, which has been damaged and dramatically divided by Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 loss.

In addition to serving as a fake elector for Mr. Trump in December 2020, Mr. Jones, then a senator, called for and signed a special session of the state legislature to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia he an unsuccessful lawsuit. try to do the same. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Mr. Jones flew to Washington on January 5, 2021, to convince Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the Electoral College votes, although Mr. Jones told the news station he ultimately did not.

In December 2022, a special grand jury investigating election interference in Georgia recommended indicting Mr. Jones on charges including forgery. The jurors also recommended charges against others who were ultimately indicted, including Mr. Trump.

Recent moves by Mr. Jones suggest he is serious about running for governor in 2026. The current governor, Brian Kemp, a Republican, is term-limited and has had a frosty relationship with Mr. Trump.

In November, Mr. Jones revealed an attack ad against a potential Republican primary rival, Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who pressured Mr. Trump in January 2021 to help “find” enough votes to overturn his election loss in Georgia.

Mr. Jones separately faces a civil suit brought by four Georgia voters who want to remove him from office on the grounds that he “participated in an insurrection and rebellion” when he filed documents falsely claiming a to be a Georgian voter.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a conservative group’s efforts to challenge the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in Georgia’s runoff Senate election in early 2021 did not violate the Voting Rights Act, under a clause that prohibits voter suppression prohibits.

In a 145-page opinion, the judge, Steve C. Jones of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, wrote that the court “maintains its prior concerns” about the way the group, True the Vote, attempted to canvass voters to challenge. ‘ suitability. But he said Fair Fight, the liberal voting rights group that filed the lawsuit against True the Vote, had failed to prove the effort was illegal.

The decision was relatively narrow, applying only to Judge Jones’ district in northern Georgia, and will do little to change the status quo: right-wing election groups have already tried to fix thousands of voter registration issues in states across the country .

But the advice is likely to embolden conservative activists hunting for voter fraud in the 2024 presidential election. Election officials and voting rights groups have raised concerns about these efforts, warning that an expanded campaign to en masse voters could intimidate people away from the polls . True the Vote and similar groups, following the lead of former President Donald J. Trump, have often spread false theories about election fraud.

“Each of these decisions that allow for this kind of mass challenge emboldens that movement,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU.

In his opinion, Judge Jones wrote that evidence from Fair Fight and individual voters in the lawsuit did not amount to intimidation under a key part of the Voting Rights Act known as Section 11(b), which prohibits any attempt to “intimidate, threaten , or coerce, or attempt to intimidate” a voter or voting act.

“Although the court finds that actions that increase the difficulty of voting when accompanied by other conduct may in some circumstances give rise to a violation of Section 11(b), an increase in difficulty does not, by itself, constitute voter intimidation ,” Judge Jones wrote.

Voting rights experts said the ruling could raise the bar on what constitutes voter intimidation under the Voting Rights Act, saying it was yet another court decision that stripped away protections in the landmark law.

“He had a very narrow view of what constitutes harassment,” Ms. Lakin said. “But raising the bar on what you have to show makes it harder to demonstrate claims of voter intimidation, at least in Georgia’s northern district.”

In a footnote to the decision, Judge Jones, who was appointed to his post by President Barack Obama, was careful not to give his blessing to tactics like those of True the Vote.

“In reaching this conclusion, the court in no way condones TTV’s actions in facilitating a host of seemingly frivolous challenges,” he wrote. He added: “TTV’s list was not reliable at all. It indeed borders on recklessness.”

Fair Fight sued True the Vote three years ago after the conservative group organized challenges in December 2020 questioning the eligibility of more than 250,000 registered voters in Georgia. To encourage right-wing activists to challenge voters, True the Vote has created a $1 million reward fund and offered bounties for evidence of “election crimes.”

Fair Fight argued in its lawsuit that finding actual fraud or ineligible voters was only a secondary concern for True the Vote, and that the real intent was to scare Democratic-leaning voters into participating in what was expected to be razor-thin runoff elections become. would determine control of the United States Senate.

Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of True the Vote, celebrated the ruling as “an answer to the prayers of loyal patriots across America.”

“Today’s ruling sends a clear message to those who would attempt to control the direction of our nation through legal action and intimidation,” Ms. Engelbrecht wrote in a statement. “American citizens will not be silenced.”

Fair Fight said in a lengthy statement that federal courts were not adequately protecting Americans from stepped-up attacks on voting rights.

“While there is much to be said about the court’s 145-page opinion, Fair Fight is disappointed that Georgians and voters across the country must continue to wait for our federal courts to impose accountability in light of the widespread and increasing intimidation efforts of voters,” Cianti Stewart said. Reid, the executive director of Fair Fight, said in the statement.

It was unclear whether the group planned to appeal the decision.

Since 2020, Democratic strategists and activists have been fixated on how to increase their gains in Georgia, once a Republican stronghold and now a veritable battleground.

But some of the state’s most prominent grassroots organizers — those responsible for President Biden’s 2020 victory and that of two Democratic U.S. senators in 2021 — are increasingly concerned that efforts and attention are waning four years later .

The national money that once flowed freely from Democratic groups to help win crucial Senate races in Georgia is slow to come. Leading organizers say, just over a month after the expected start of their initiatives to mobilize voters for the presidential elections, they are facing a deep sense of apathy among key constituencies that will require even more resources.

And small but potentially crucial shifts in strategy — cost-conscious measures such as delaying large-scale voter engagement programs until later in the cycle or relying more on volunteers than paid candidates — have stoked fears among some organizers about their ability to repeat their successes. More than that, it has led them to wonder how seriously Democratic donors and party leaders will take the state in 2024, even as Biden’s campaign indicated that a repeat victory in Georgia is part of his strategy.

“What we’re hearing is it’s not about the first level,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which has been one of the leading organizations on the ground in Georgia since 2020. “So that’s a bit disappointing, but we don’t know exactly what that means yet. But some early indications are that it will not be prioritized.”

Unlike 2020 or 2022, Georgia will not see a major statewide race in 2024, increasing the urgency for progressives to build both a robust digital operation and organizing on the ground.

Interviews with more than a dozen Georgia-based organizers and political strategists, as well as a review of financial disclosure forms for the state’s most committed grassroots organizing groups, revealed smaller fundraising totals and slower spending in 2023 — a slowdown that’s not unusual for a year without a major election, but it has highlighted concerns about the resources needed for the presidential race in the state.

“It’s no secret across the ecosystem that fundraising has been a challenge in 2023 through 2024,” said Jonae Wartel, a Democratic political strategist who helped run Raphael Warnock’s 2020 U.S. Senate campaign. “I don’t think the resources are where they need to be right now, but I really think it’s about engaging and engaging the donor community to really invest early.”

A number of organizers in Georgia have met with national donors in recent months. At a meeting of liberal donors and national organizing groups in Washington last week, Georgia organizers were among those assured that their work would continue to be funded, although some left the impression that the campaigns in other states undermined Georgia’s interest in the eyes of some could overshadow. followers.

Mr. Albright, who attended the meeting in Washington, said donors and party leaders had considered heavier investments in swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. North Carolina, a southern state that faces a highly competitive gubernatorial race in 2024, is also likely to receive more attention.

Similar concern is growing among donors who were early to the Georgia cause in 2020 and who are increasingly irritated by the slow trickle of money flowing into the state.

“For some inexplicable reason, a lot of people are leaving Georgia out of the top states to focus on next year,” said Steve Phillips, an early supporter of Stacey Abrams and a progressive Democratic donor from San Francisco. Mr. Phillips said he had “heard from top donors and several billionaire advisers” that “they have a top tier of five states and Georgia is not in that.”

Mr. Phillips also blamed some Democratic leaders. “If donors don’t hear from top campaigners that we can and must win Georgia,” he said, “then donors won’t be excited about it.”

Leading organizers in Georgia argue that more money and manpower will flow into the state as the general election approaches, and they expect a more visible Donald J. Trump, should he earn the Republican nomination, will push progressive donors and reluctant voters off the sidelines motivate. . But the current slowdown, combined with declining support for Biden among young and Black voters, shows the challenge Democrats will face.

And while grassroots groups plan to launch their organizing initiatives for the presidential election in January, it is expected to take a few months before Mr. Biden’s campaign is expected to set up its own organizing infrastructure there. Georgia’s presidential primaries are on March 12.

In some ways, the groups are operating in a similar environment to the early days of the 2020 election. Megadonors didn’t pay much attention to Georgia until a few months before November, when polls showed the Democrats’ strength.

The groups quickly grew in size and scope after Democrats won two Senate runoff elections in 2021 — developments that gave the once-fledgling organizations lasting power and proved that there had long been belief among veteran state organizers that the South could play a role before the elections. party through good investments.

“Building a winning movement requires year-round support and investment,” said Craig Walters, organizing director of Fair Fight Action, in a statement. “And the time for that investment is now.”

This month’s elections in Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi offered a first look at next year’s political landscape. Issues like abortion access and the erosion of democratic norms have galvanized Democratic voters, but enthusiasm for Biden’s reelection is at record lows among key parts of the base.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released this month showed black voters moving noticeably toward Trump. Pessimism was also pronounced among young voters, who said in interviews they had been rejected by both parties.

According to the groups, this only underlines the importance of their work.

“As we think about investing in this election, think about these organizations that support and talk to voters all year round,” said Hillary Holley, executive director of Care in Action, an organization that supports domestic workers. “Because at the end of the day, we will be one of the best messengers, because we have the most trust with these voters who are not considering voting for Trump, but are more considering delaying it.”

Some groups also face internal challenges. The New Georgia Project recently completed an internal investigation into its finances following claims that the organization mishandled funds it raised in 2020 and 2021. first reported by Politico.

Kendra Davenport Cotton, the CEO of the New Georgia Project, said the internal review “revealed the misstep” and left her organization “on sound financial footing.” She added that she had set a fundraising goal of about $18 million for 2024 – close to what the group raised in 2020.

In an email to supporters on Wednesday previewing the 2024 organizing campaign, the New Georgia Project framed its plans as a solution to what it called Mr. Biden’s campaign’s “messaging problem.”

Black voters, Ms. Davenport Cotton said in an interview, “don’t hear enough about what he did for them, which our research shows is how they understand their political power and feel motivated to get out again.”

Many voters, she said, feel compelled to blame the White House for issues for which state or local leaders are responsible. Her group and others like it plan to highlight the difference.

“It is incumbent on groups like us to be very intentional in those messages,” she said.

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During the past two seasons at the University of Georgia, Jalen Carter established himself as the most disruptive player in college football’s top defense, and in January, when the 6-foot-3, 300-plus pound defensive lineman led the Bulldogs to a second straight National championship, Carter had positioned himself as a likely top-five pick in NFL draft.

But that changed on March 1 at the NFL scout group when Carter was booked on two misdemeanor charges related to a car accident that occurred hours after the team’s championship parade in January that killed two people, including a Georgia Carter’s teammate.

For two weeks, Carter’s future in the NFL appeared to be in jeopardy as teams waited to hear if he would face jail time. On March 16, he pleaded not to two charges of reckless driving and racing. He was sentenced to 12 months probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, perform 80 hours of community service and complete a state-approved defensive driving course.

Since then, Carter, 22, hasn’t done much to allay the concerns the teams now have about him. He was criticized when he and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, decided not to make pre-draft visits with teams that chose outside the top 10. unfathomable prospects in this year’s draft, which opens Thursday in Kansas City, Mo.

“It’s always a balance of risk and reward,” said John Idzik Jr., a former Jets general manager. “But when you have impact players in a high-impact position, you look closely at those guys.”

In the 2022 draft, a record five players were drafted from Georgia’s defense in the first round, including top pick, defensive end Travon Walker. Some reviewers believed Carter, who was a sophomore on that team and ineligible for the draft, was the most talented.

“I started watching the Georgia tape last year,” said Mike Mayock, a former Raiders general manager, who added, referring to Carter’s jersey number, “And I’m like, ‘Who the hell is 88? isn’t even on the list.’”

The Raiders fired Mayock in 2022 after a tumultuous three-year period that saw several of his top picks landed out of the league for missteps off the field.

Mayock selected wide receiver Henry Ruggs III and cornerback Damon Arnette in the first round in 2020, and both were gone by the 2021 season. Arnette was released that year after a post on social media showed that he was holding guns and making death threats. Arnette has not played in the NFL since. Ruggs was released after being charged with drunk driving in an accident that killed a woman and her dog.

“I’m not going to get into individual things,” Mayock said. “I would just like to say that organizationally we took a deep dive into every player we picked and finally made a decision.”

The decision to draft players like Carter with star talent but red flags, including legal and medical issues, is typically approached one of three ways by NFL teams, Mayock said.

A team can accept that the risk is worth the reward and give a high draft pick extra support. Or the team only likes the player with a lower choice, with less risk and money. Or a team decides that a player’s infractions don’t make him worth drafting.

“Everyone is comfortable with the great player who has no character issues, but not everyone takes it that way,” said Rod Graves, a former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals. “In fact, I would say probably 99 percent of players are outside of that box to some degree.”

Players with off-field concerns typically improve or damage their draft stock during off-season meetings with teams or during college scout training. So far, Carter has been criticized for both.

On the Georgia campus in March, Carter trained for scouts and coaches from all 32 teams, the first time he had done so because he missed the scouting group. According to a person who attended the training and was not authorized to speak in public, Carter weighed 323 pounds, nine pounds more than his measurement on the combine harvester, and failed to complete some exercises due to exhaustion.

Weeks later, Carter and Rosenhaus decided that Carter would not make pre-draft visits to teams that chose outside of the top 10, meaning teams lower in the original order that trade for those higher picks have not met him.

“I think what you would really like with a kid who has had problems off the field is you want them to finish it all off and put their best foot forward,” said Mayock. “I don’t think you knock them down for it. But I think if you’re ready and you go to every visit and you put your best foot forward, all it can do is help you.

John Schneider, general manager of the Seahawks, who has No. 5 in the draft, said in a podcast earlier this month that he has no opinion “one way or another” on Carter’s choice not to meet with teams outside the top 10.

Carter seemed to leave a good impression on the Detroit Lions, who have the number 6 pick. Detroit general manager Brad Holmes said at a press conference last week that he “felt better about him” after Carter’s visit.

Ultimately, Carter’s talent will likely keep him from slipping significantly into the draft. In an interview with HBO, Carter seemed to acknowledge that point when he said his involvement in the crash “would kind of matter.”

There have been players in Carter’s shoes before, and Rosenhaus has represented a few, including Warren Sapp, who was expected to be a top pick before reports surfaced that he had failed drug tests prior to the draft. Sapp fell to the Buccaneers at number 12, costing him millions of dollars early in his 13-year career, but became one of the greatest defensive tackles of all time, inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013.

“Things like this keep you up all night,” Mayock said.

Jalen Carter, a potential top-five pick in the upcoming NFL draft, was booked Wednesday night on felony charges related to a January car accident that killed two people, including a teammate from the University of Georgia. The crash occurred hours after the team’s parade for winning the national championship.

The warrants charged Carter with reckless driving and racing.

The Athens-Clarke County Police Department said Carter, who had not been publicly linked to the crash before Wednesday, raced his Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk with a Ford Expedition driven by Chandler LeCroy, a recruiting analyst for the team.

According to the police report, both cars were exceeding the speed limit and firing into oncoming lanes prior to the January 15 crash in Athens, Georgia. The expedition was traveling at about 100 mph when it left the road and crashed into a utility pole, killing LeCroy, 24, and Devin Willock, 20, a sophomore on the team. Two other passengers in the car were injured.

Toxicology reports indicated that LeCroy was intoxicated at the time of the crash.

In a statement on his social media account, 21-year-old Carter said news reports contained “inaccurate information” about what happened the night of the crash. “I have no doubt that when all the facts are known I will be fully cleared of any criminal wrongdoing,” he added.

Carter turned himself in at an Athens jail on Wednesday night and was released about 15 minutes later. He must be brought before in April.

Allegations of his involvement were first reported by The Atlanta Journal Constitutionwho said he had made contradictory statements to police about his whereabouts at the time of the crash.

“The charges announced today are deeply concerning,” Georgia Coach Kirby Smart said in a statement, “especially as we continue to struggle to process the devastating loss of two beloved members of our community.”

A defensive tackle, Carter is considered one of the top candidates for the April NFL draft and was in Indianapolis for the league’s scouting group when the warrants were issued. He was scheduled to address the news media there on Wednesday morning, but did not show up.

Scott Fitterer, general manager of the Carolina Panthers, told reporters Wednesday that team leaders had interviewed Carter Monday night as part of their preparation to make the ninth overall pick in the draft. Fitterer said he heard news of the allegations against Carter on Wednesday morning, but had yet to discuss it with his staff.

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” Fitterer said. “We will let it all play and make a decision.”

Chris Rim contributed reporting from Indianapolis.

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Jalen Carter, a 21-year-old defensive tackle for the University of Georgia, pleaded not contesting two charges of reckless driving and racing stemming from a January car accident in January that killed two people, his attorney Kim Stephens said in a statement. a statement.

Carter, who is a potential top-five pick in the NFL draft in April, was sentenced to 12 months probation and must pay a $1,000 fine, perform 80 hours of community service and complete a state-approved defensive driving course. He will not serve jail time and cannot face additional charges in connection with the crash.

The crash killed Devin Willock, Carter’s teammate at the University of Georgia, and Chandler LeCroy, a recruiting analyst, the morning after a Jan. 14 parade to celebrate the team for winning the national championship.

Carter’s connection to the crash was not publicly revealed until March 1, when he attended the NFL’s scouting group in Indianapolis. He returned to Athens-Clarke County to surrender to police warrants that charged him with racing his Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk with a Ford Expedition driven by LeCroy. According to the police report, both cars were speeding and collided with oncoming traffic prior to the crash in Athens, Georgia.

The expedition was traveling at about 100 miles per hour when it went off the road and crashed into a utility pole, killing LeCroy, 24, and Willock, 20, a sophomore on the team. Two other passengers were injured.

Toxicology reports indicated that LeCroy was intoxicated at the time of the crash.

Stephens called the deal “fair and just and based on the evidence in this case,” adding that “Mr. Carter continues to mourn the loss of his friends and continue to pray for their families, as well as continued healing for injured friends.”

Willock’s family earlier said they had no plans to take legal action. LeCroy’s mother declined to comment.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution first reported Carter’s involvement and accusations from law enforcement that he had made conflicting statements about his whereabouts at the time of the crash.

Carter’s plea came a day after he trained in front of NFL scouts, coaches and general managers on Georgia’s pro day. According to a source who attended the training and was not authorized to speak publicly, Carter weighed 323 pounds, nine pounds more than his measurement in the scouting combination, and did not complete some exercises due to exhaustion.

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.