Members of the Atlanta Young Republicans attend a watch party of the first Republican presidential primary debate at a bar in Atlanta, Georgia, on August 23, 2023.
Chandan Khanna | Afp | Getty Images
The Georgia Senate Republican Caucus is suspending a Republican state senator who attacked him for opposing his plan to indict Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for indicting former President Donald Trump.
The caucus announced Thursday that it is indefinitely suspending Sen. Colton Moore of Trenton, who represents a district in northwest Georgia.
“Senator Moore is entitled to his opinion,” the caucus said in a statement. “However, while championing his ill-conceived proposal, Senator Moore knowingly misled people across Georgia and our country, causing unnecessary tension and animosity while putting his caucus colleagues and their families at risk of personal harm,” said the group, which includes 32 of the 56 members of the Georgia Senate.
Moore attacked his colleagues as “Republicans in name only,” or RINOs.
“The Georgia RINOs responded to my call to resist Trump’s witch hunts by acting like children and kicking me out of the caucus,” Moore wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s the latest evidence of the rift between Gov. Brian Kemp and many elected Republicans on the one hand, and grassroots Trump supporters who have seized control of the Republican Party organization in Georgia.
Kemp refused to agree with Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election and help him overturn his narrow loss in the state. Willis has charged Trump and 18 others, including the former chairman of the state Republican Party, with crimes related to the effort. All have pleaded not guilty.
Moore will still be a member of the Senate and will remain a Republican, but could have difficulty passing legislation without the support of the majority caucus. But he has often acted like a lone party on the panel, voting against measures that all other Republicans or all other senators supported.
Moore was the most prominent supporter of a special session to impeach and fire Willis or remove her from office, winning Trump’s support. Kemp denounced the call as “a racketeering scam” to raise campaign contributions for Moore in a news conference that was unusually passionate for the buttoned-up Kemp.
Kemp called the move “political theater that only inflames the emotions of the moment” and said a special session “would ignore current Georgia law and directly interfere in the proceedings of a separate but co-equal branch of government.” Kemp said he did not believe that Willis had done something that warranted removal.
Moore launched a petition for lawmakers to call for a special session, which required the signatures of three-fifths of both chambers. That would require some Democratic support, as Republicans have less than 60% majorities in each chamber. And the Senate would have needed a two-thirds majority to remove Willis after the House impeached her. Moore never managed to convince his fellow Republicans, let alone Democrats, and win the signatures of a Republican representative and another Republican senator.
However, Moore attacked some other state senators. After Republican Senators Bo Hatchett and Shelly Echols issued a joint statement criticizing Moore’s call, they said Moore had singled them out in retaliation and that they had received threats.
The faction alleged that Moore violated internal rules and was suspended by Republican leaders after he refused to follow those rules. The faction claimed Moore would not be haunted because of “his incorrect political position.”
Some other Georgia Republicans have openly attacked Willis, including U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“Fani Willis should be ashamed of herself and she will lose her job. We’re going to make sure of that,” Greene told reporters outside the Fulton County Jail just before Trump arrived in a motorcade to undergo a booking and mug shot.
Although Moore was fired, some Republican senators support the plan to have Willis removed through a new prosecutorial oversight commission. The State Attorney Qualifications Commission is scheduled to begin work sometime after Oct. 1, if the state Supreme Court approves its rules. The panel was created to discipline or fire wayward prosecutors.
Some district attorneys, including Willis, are already suing to overturn the law, saying it improperly infringes on their authority.
While Kemp criticized the timing of Trump’s impeachment, he said he had seen no evidence that the commission should discipline or fire Willis.
