by Ben Whedon
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team filed a petition on Monday with a Georgia state court to bar the Fulton County district attorney from pressing charges against him.
Trump attorney Drew Findling submitted the filing to the Superior Court of Fulton County, asking that DA Fani Willis be barred from further involvement in the ongoing investigation and that a grand jury report regarding Trump’s attempts to challenge the results of the 2020 election in the state be “quashed.”
“Comes now, President Donald J. Trump, by and through undersigned counsel and files this Motion to Quash the Special Purpose Grand Jury Report and Preclude any State prosecuting agency from presenting or utilizing any evidence or testimony derived by the Special Purpose Grand Jury (hereinafter ‘SPGJ’) in the above-referenced matter, reads the filing, which Politico obtained.
The former president has alleged that the proceedings violated his Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Trump has derided Willis’s case, like many other legal proceedings against him, as a partisan witch hunt. That narrative has found some favor with the public following grand jury forewoman Emily Kohrs’s media tour, in which she made several appearances discussing the case.
In one of these appearances, Kohrs indicated her own excitement at the prospect of issuing Trump a subpoena merely to meet him in such circumstances.
The Monday motion comes amid talk of a potential arrest of the former president in connection with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into his payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels via his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
The cases are largely unrelated, though both have drawn scrutiny for the allegedly partisan motivations of public officials pursuing them.
Legal scholars have questioned the strength of any potential charges, given a valid prosecution would require Bragg to tie state law on the falsification of business records to federal campaign finance regulations.
Trump is also undergoing a third investigation, which special counsel Jack Smith is pursuing on behalf of the Department of Justice, and which involves the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
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Ben Whedon is the night editor for the Just the News. He came to the company from Breitbart News and is a graduate of Washington and Lee University.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Photo “Fani Willis” by Fani Willis. Background Photo “Courtroom” by Karen Neoh. CC BY 2.0.
