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The judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump in Georgia has thrown out some criminal charges but left most in place.
Judge Scott McAfee found 6 counts of the 41-count indictment against Mr. Trump and some of his co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, unaccounted for.
But he said the charges could be filed again at a later date.
Mr Trump is one of 19 people charged with conspiring to alter the state's 2020 election results.
“The lack of detail on an essential legal element is, in the opinion of the undersigned, fatal,” Judge McAfee wrote in his order Wednesday.
He said the charges did not provide enough information for the accused to prepare their legal defense “intelligently”, adding that “this does not mean that the entire charge has been dismissed”.
Mr McAfee accidentally appointed the Trump case in 2023, six months after he was appointed to the judgeship by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican.
He previously worked as a prosecutor, including Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis, a Democrat who led the investigation into the former president.
Mr McAfee's ruling affects three of the 13 charges against Mr Trump.
They relate Mr Trump's call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, in which he said: “I want to do this. I want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
The former president has been accused of defying his oath of office and soliciting government officials to break the law.
But Mr McAfee said the allegation was not enough about what Trump wanted officials to do.
Other dismissed charges apply to some of his main co-defendants: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Mark Meadows.
Donald Trump: “I want to find 11,780 votes”
In his order, Judge McAfee said the charges “contain all the essential elements of the crimes, but fail to set forth sufficient particulars as to the nature of their commission, namely the underlying offense charged.”
It was a victory for Mr Trump and his co-defendants, who filed to dismiss the charges. Prosecutors can now choose to refile the charges with additional information in their case or let the ruling stand and focus on other charges.
The group initially faced 41 charges. The former president faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of Georgia's most serious fraud charge.
In a statement, Mr Trump's lawyer in the Georgia case, Steve Sado, said the ruling was “a proper application of the law because the prosecution failed to allege any wrongdoing on that count”.
“The entire case against President Trump constitutes political, electoral interference, and should be impeached.”
Mr Trump, who is running for president against Joe Biden in November, has slammed the case as politically motivated.
A Georgia ruling did not stop the defense's bid to fire Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis on ethics grounds that she had an improper relationship with a prosecutor hired on the case.
Mr McAfee is expected to rule on the ethics complaint soon. If he finds that his former employer should be removed from the case, the trial could be delayed for months.
Mr Trump is a defendant in four criminal cases and several civil cases.
On Tuesday, a judge accepted a $92 million (£72 million) bond from Mr Trump in a defamation suit brought by author E Jean Carroll, while the former president appealed the ruling. A jury in January found that Mr Trump owed the former columnist millions of dollars for defamation when he denied sexually assaulting her.
The bond ensures Ms Carroll will be paid if she loses the appeal.
He has also been ordered to pay more than $450 million to the state of New York after it was discovered that he defrauded banks by lying about the value of his assets.
