Inset: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis observed a hearing on the Georgia election interference case in Atlanta on Friday, March 1, 2024. (Photo Credit: AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool).
Former President Donald Trump made remarks after casting his vote in the Florida primary election in Palm Beach, FL, on Tuesday, March 19, 2024. (Photo Credit: AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee).
Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to dismiss him from the paused-but-extant effort to kick Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis off the marquee racketeering (RICO) prosecution she initiated in Atlanta.
Far from giving up the gun in that battle, however, the knock-on effect hoped for with the dismissal of the appeal itself is the full-on dismissal of the underlying RICO indictment.
Filed under the procedural vehicle of an interlocutory appeal, the four-page notice of a jurisdictional issue cites a relevant precedent, asks the state’s second-highest court to “inquire into its own jurisdiction,” and to find that jurisdiction lacking.
“President Donald J. Trump hereby notifies this Court of a following jurisdictional issue,” the motion begins, “the unconstitutionality of his continued indictment and prosecution by the State of Georgia in the case giving rise to this appeal, now that he is President-Elect and will soon become the 47th President of the United States, and its direct impact on this Court’s jurisdiction.”
Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow paints a picture of an executive branch head who ought to be wholly unencumbered by the criminal charges that remain on the books in Fulton County, Georgia.
“A sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal,” the motion reads before citing U.S. Department of Justice guidance that forbids the federal law enforcement agencies from going after a sitting president.
The motion goes on to note that just recently special counsel Jack Smith filed the final documents necessary to dismiss the two federal cases against Trump in Washington, D.C., and the Southern District of Florida.
This exemplary action from the federal government, Sadow argues, amounts to something not entirely unlike the proof in the pudding of just desserts for Peach State prosecutors.
Citing the interplay of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution and “the principles of federalism and comity,” Trump’s defense attorney argues that state prosecutors are prevented “from proceeding against the sitting in any way.”
As of now, the overarching case is on hold.
Recall, the sprawling, 98-page, 41-count criminal indictment was released on Aug. 14, 2023. In that document, Trump and 18 others were accused of myriad election-related crimes — premised on an alleged conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
By late 2023, four codefendants accepted plea deals; six other codefendants rejected similar deals that would have required guilty pleas. At the same time, by late January of this year, nine codefendants joined together in a semi-successful effort to have Willis and her entire office disqualified from the case.
That effort to disqualify Willis picked up steam — all but kiboshing district court proceedings in the case. The dismissal case is now before the state’s court of appeals — but in late November, after Trump was elected to become the nation’s 47th president, the appellate court mysteriously paused further proceedings “until further notice.”
Willis, for her part, has said she intends to continue trying the case despite the number of remaining defendants when all is said and done with pretrial motions and ancillary appeals. That aggressive stance from the state appeared to indicate that the prosecutor was not about to wash her hands of Trump merely because of his regained White House perch.
Wednesday’s motion comes as perhaps an anticipatory strike on any renewed efforts in the case by Willis or her office.
“[T]here is compelling evidence of local bias and political prejudice against the President by the local prosecutor, who not only answers to a tiny segment of the American electorate but is acting in clear opposition to the will of the citizens of Georgia as reflected by the recent election results,” the motion goes on.
To hear Sadow tell it, Willis has proved herself to be a political foe of Trump who seems to be using her anti-Trump position in order to burnish her own electoral bona fides at the expense of “our constitutional structure.”
And that, the defense says, should no longer be countenanced.
“Accordingly, well before the inauguration of President Trump, this Court should inquire into its jurisdiction to continue to hear this appeal,” the motion concludes. “That inquiry should result in this Court deciding that both this Court and the trial court lack jurisdiction to entertain any further criminal process against President Trump as the continued indictment and prosecution of President Trump by the State of Georgia are unconstitutional. President Trump respectfully submits that upon reaching that decision, this Court should dismiss his appeal for lack of jurisdiction with directions to the trial court to immediately dismiss the indictment against President Trump.”
