President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyersrequested on Wednesday that the Fulton County racketeering case against him be dismissed by a Georgia appeals court on the grounds that a “sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal.”
The 2020 election interference charges against Trump should be dropped, according to documents filed with the Georgia Court of Appeals, because of “the unconstitutionality of his continued indictment and prosecution by the State of Georgia” and because “he is President-Elect and will soon become the 47th President of the United States.”
For the majority of the year, the case has been on hold while Trump’s attorneys have appealed a decision that rejected their attempt to bar Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office from pursuing the case due to a conflict of interest.
Last month, the appeals court unexpectedly and mysteriously canceled the meeting scheduled to hear arguments on Willis’s disqualification this week.
Trump attorneys Steven Sadow, Jennifer Little, and Matthew Winchester said in their petition that Trump’s election victory warrants the case’s complete dismissal. They referenced a legal paper from the Justice Department that ruled that presidents cannot be charged while they are in office. Last month, the Justice Department dismissed two federal criminal proceedings against Trump based on that memo; but, the Georgia case is a state matter, not a federal one.
According to the Trump petition, the same rules ought to be followed regardless, and the judges were encouraged to act “well before the inauguration of President Trump.”
The court of appeals “should dismiss his appeal for lack of jurisdiction with directions to the trial court to immediately dismiss the indictment against President Trump,” according to the brief.
A request for comment was turned down by the DA’s office.
There used to be four criminal cases against Trump, including the Georgia case. Last month, the federal cases pertaining to election interference and classified information were formally dismissed. Earlier this year, Trump was found guilty of felonies in a New York case; however, his sentencing has been placed on indefinite hold as the judge considers his applications to have the case dismissed.
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