Former US President and 2024 Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump gestures about weight lifting as he speaks at a Republican volunteer recruitment event at Fervent, a Calvary Chapel, in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 8, 2023.
Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday unanimously dismissed a longshot bid by former President Donald Trump to quash the special grand jury report that beneficial criminal charges within the Fulton County district attorney’s probe of Georgia’s 2020 election.
The state Supreme Court also rejected Trump’s request that it bar Fulton DA Fani Willis from continuing to oversee the criminal investigation.
The ruling got here weeks before Willis is predicted to hunt indictments within the probe of efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over him within the Peach State.
Thus far, nobody has been criminally charged within the investigation. And the identities of greater than a dozen individuals who the special grand jury beneficial be prosecuted remain secret.
The state’s high court said Trump’s attorneys failed to point out that the case presents “certainly one of those extremely rare circumstances” that requires bypassing lower courts.
Trump’s legal team has a pending similar request in Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta to bar the special grand jury’s work and report from getting used in any future civil or criminal proceeding.
In a petition 4 days ago, Trump’s attorneys acknowledged that it will be highly unusual for the state Supreme Court to take the case, since that body normally reviews appeals from lower courts.
But they argued that the court should take up the matter directly, partially due to Trump’s status as a former president and a 2024 presidential candidate.
And, as they did of their petition in Fulton County court, the lawyers argued that the evidence compiled by the special grand jury within the election probe was “unlawfully obtained.”
In its dismissal Monday of Trump’s petition, the Supreme Court said it has “made clear that a petitioner cannot invoke this Court’s original jurisdiction as a strategy to circumvent the strange channels for obtaining the relief he seeks without making some showing that he’s being prevented fair access to those strange channels.”
And Trump “makes no showing that he has been prevented fair access to the strange channels,” the justices wrote.
Trump’s lawyers didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The special grand jury heard evidence and testimony from dozens of witnesses last 12 months, nevertheless it didn’t have the facility to return indictments.
Last week, two regular Superior Court grand juries were empaneled, soon to be tasked with deciding whether to criminally charge Trump and his allies.
Willis’ criminal investigation began in 2021, shortly after the general public revelation that Trump had called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and pressured him to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s win within the state.
Raffensperger rebuffed that request, which was a part of an effort by Trump and his allies to either reverse his loss within the Electoral College to Biden, or to boost enough doubt in regards to the leads to several key swing states like Georgia to throw the choice about who could be president to the House of Representatives.
Trump is currently the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Since launching his campaign, he has already been indicted in two other criminal cases.
In Recent York state court in Manhattan, he has pleaded not guilty in Manhattan to charges of falsifying business records in reference to a 2016 hush money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels.
And he also has pleaded not guilty in Florida federal court to charges related to his retention of classified records after he left the White House.
The special counsel within the classified records case, Jack Smith, individually is investigating Trump for possible crimes in his try to reverse his loss within the 2020 election, and for his actions leading as much as the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
A joint session of Congress met that day to certify Biden’s win within the Electoral College.
