The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday unanimously rejected a bid by former President Donald Trump—who is seeking the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination—to effectively end Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' probe into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The former president's legal team last week filed petitions with the Georgia Supreme Court and the Fulton County Superior Court—after Willis signaled that charges in the investigation could come in early August. Trump aimed to disqualify Willis and to quash a related special purpose grand jury report.
However, Monday's five-page order states that Trump has neither "presented in his original petition either the facts or the law necessary to mandate Willis' disqualification by this court," nor "shown that this case presents one of those extremely rare circumstances in which this court's original jurisdiction should be invoked."
The political action committee MeidasTouch on Monday called Trump's filing in the state's highest court "desperate and frivolous," and highlighted that all but one of the nine justices were appointed by Republican governors.
CNN reported that "Trump has other legal challenges related to the Fulton County criminal investigation that are still pending. He has denied wrongdoing and claims that the prosecutors are only investigating him because they want to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign."
Some pro-democracy groups argue the twice-impeached former president is disqualified from holding office again, under a section of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, because he provoked the January 6, 2021 insurrection with his "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Though Trump has not yet faced any federal charges from Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe into the 2021 Capitol attack, the ex-president and his aide Walt Nauta were indicted last month in a classified documents case led by Smith. That came after the Manhattan district attorney in April charged Trump with 34 felonies stemming from alleged hush money payments.
Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
