Cho Kuk, head of the Rebuilding Korea Party's Innovation Policy Institute, said President Lee Jae-myung is highly likely to be convicted in an appeal that will resume after his term, unless the Supreme Court reverses its legal reasoning.
Writing on Facebook on the 1st, Cho pointed to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn a lower court ruling and send the election law case back for retrial with an opinion favoring conviction. In May last year, the top court found that Lee's remarks about golfing with Kim Moon-ki and his statements on the Baekhyeon-dong development amounted to publishing false information, vacating an appellate ruling that had acquitted him and returning the case to the Seoul High Court. The retrial has been left without a scheduled hearing date, with the court citing Article 84 of the Constitution following Lee's inauguration.
Cho also voiced concern about the Democratic Party's push for a special counsel bill targeting what it calls fabricated indictments under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, as well as proposals to withdraw the charges. To drop an indictment on the grounds that it was fabricated, he said, the fabrication must first be established, and that requires securing evidence through an internal probe or a criminal investigation.
He added that under current law, prosecutors can withdraw an indictment only before a first-instance verdict is handed down. Pushing to drop the charges in Lee's case, which is already at the appellate stage, would inevitably backfire both politically and legally, he warned.
