In the latest episode of his legal battle with the state of Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, former President Trump’s legal team has moved, in three filings, to take three aspects of his legal battle to the Georgia Supreme Court.
The three petitions filed by Trump’s team argue that the evidence for the case collected by a special grand jury last year should be thrown out, that prosecutors should be banned from presenting that collected evidence to a grand jury with charging powers, and that Willis should be disqualified from any related proceedings in the case.
The Trump lawyers argue, in the filings, that letting Fani Willis’ investigation into him proceed would lead to “a violation of his fundamental constitutional rights” as he “seeks his Party’s nomination for the Presidency of the United States.” The petitions were filed both with the Georgia Supreme Court and the Fulton County Superior Court.
Arguing that the grand jury in the case could be making its decision based on faulty information, the lawyers wrote, “A regular Fulton County grand jury could return an indictment any day that will have been based on a report and predicate investigative process that were wholly without authority.” Continuing, they added, “It is one thing to indict a ham sandwich. To indict the mustard-stained napkin that it once sat on is quite another.”
The lawyers also wrote, “Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time. But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”
The attorneys made a similar request in March, saying. “Stranded between the supervising judge’s protracted passivity and the district attorney’s looming indictment, (Trump) has no meaningful option other than to seek this court’s intervention.”
Adding context to the special grand jury report, ABC News reported, “the special grand jury revealed no details about any such recommendations, beyond recommending that prosecutors seek indictments against witnesses who they believed may have lied during their testimony.” The new grand jury will be using that to determine if charges are warranted.
Willis, who began the investigation two years ago now, has hinted that she is considering using the state of Georgia’s RICO statute in an attempt to take down former President Trump. It is unclear on what basis she will be making that statute useful, as it usually pertains to organized crime.
The Willis case comes alongside Trump’s legal battles with Alvin Bragg and Special Counsel Jack Smith, who indicted him in Miami for his handling of classified information at his Mar-a-Lago home.
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