The state Supreme Court late Monday unanimously dismissed a motion by Donald Trump\u2019s lawyers to dismiss Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis\u2019 investigation of the former president\u2019s alleged attempts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election outcome in Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A special purpose grand jury Willis assembled last year has recommended that one or more witnesses be indicted for perjury. No names were released when portions of the report were released in February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s lawyers filed their motion to dismiss the case last week, alleging that Willis should not be allowed to pursue any charges against Trump because of a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Willis, a Democrat, was disqualified last year from including Burt Jones, then a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, in the investigation because she had hosted a fundraiser on behalf of Democrat Charlie Bailey, Jones\u2019 opponent. Jones went on to defeat Bailey last November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s lawyers claimed the special purpose grand jury process was a violation of their client\u2019s constitutional rights and that as a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he would suffer \u201cirremediable reputational harm\u201d if he were forced to defend himself against a criminal indictment during the campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the Georgia Supreme Court has the authority to exercise original jurisdiction in \u201cextremely rare situations,\u201d the justices ruled Monday that Trump has not demonstrated a need for the court to pursue that route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Court has made clear that a petitioner cannot invoke this Court\u2019s original jurisdiction as a way to circumvent the ordinary channels for obtaining the relief he seeks without making some showing that he is being prevented fair access to those ordinary channels,\u201d the justices wrote in a joint opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe makes no showing that he has been prevented fair access to the ordinary channels. Notably, Petitioner does not assert that the superior court has denied him the opportunity or ability to seek therein the relief he now requests from this Court.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Fulton County case involves a recorded phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 asking the Republican state elections chief to \u201cfind\u201d 11,780 votes in Georgia. Democrat Joe Biden had carried the Peach State the previous November by 11,779 votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The special purpose grand jury also heard testimony surrounding the assembling of a panel of \u201cfake\u201d GOP electors in December 2020 to cast electoral votes for Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the special purpose grand jury\u2019s work complete, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney empaneled two regular grand juries last week. One of those two juries is expected to hear the case against Trump and consider indictments that could be issued as soon as next month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n[mailerlite_form form_id=2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ATLANTA \u2013 The state Supreme Court late Monday unanimously dismissed a motion by Donald Trump\u2019s lawyers to dismiss Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis\u2019 investigation of the former president\u2019s alleged attempts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election outcome in Georgia. A special purpose grand jury Willis assembled last year has recommended that one or [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10416,8526,9466,8472,13454,12168],"class_list":["post-91846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-2020-election","tag-donald-trump","tag-fani-willis","tag-fulton-county","tag-peach","tag-state","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}