Nervous that he’s about to be indicted yet again, this time in the state of Georgia for attempting to overturn 2020 election results in the Peach State, failed former president Donald Trump is having his attorneys try a legal maneuver that reeks of desperation.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, lawyers for the disgraced ex-president filed an emergency appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court in which they argue that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be barred from issuing any new indictments against their client.
The motion filed on Thursday asks Georgia’s highest court to put a halt to any ongoing proceedings “related to and flowing from the special purpose grand jury’s investigation until this matter can be resolved.” This would include any consideration of a possible indictment for alleged criminal meddling in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election by one of two regular Fulton grand juries that were seated on Tuesday.
Trump’s attorneys — Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little — acknowledged that such a petition filed before Georgia’s highest court is typically a long shot. But they said “extraordinary circumstances” justify it now.
According to the motion, “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 filing also contends that Georgia’s statute for special grand juries is too vague, arguing, “(Trump) now sits on a precipice. 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.”
Of course, such an argument could be made if and when Trump is convicted and appeals the process that led to him being charged in the first place. The fact that he’s doing so prematurely suggests he know that state charges such as those he may face in Georgia cannot be pardoned by a sympathetic president or dismissed by U.S. attorney general he might appoint if he happens to win another term in office. Only the governor of Georgia could issue a pardon, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has been critical of Trump, who has also attacked the governor on numerous occasions for failing to seize ballot boxes in the state and declare him the winner.
Willis is expected to announce any criminal charges against Trump as soon as August.
