ATLANTA (AP) – President-elect Donald Trump will seek to dismiss an election interference lawsuit in Georgia when he returns to the White House next month, arguing that the state’s courts have no jurisdiction over him. .
Georgia’s case against Trump and others remains largely on hold pending a pretrial appeal of prosecutor Fani Willis’ order allowing the case to proceed despite defense claims of a conflict of interest. are. Trump’s lawyers filed a notice Wednesday with the Georgia Court of Appeals, saying the sitting president has “complete immunity from prosecution or criminal proceedings, whether state or federal.”
The filing asks the appeals court to consider whether it still has jurisdiction to hear the case before he takes office next month. The court should conclude that the court and the trial court lack jurisdiction “because Georgia’s continued indictment and prosecution of President Trump is unconstitutional.”
Trump’s lawyers are asking the appeals court to dismiss his appeal for lack of jurisdiction and instruct the trial court to immediately drop the charges against him.
Also on Wednesday, former Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the case, asked a trial judge to throw out his plea. Chesebro was one of four people to plead guilty in the case in the months following their indictment.
Representatives for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis declined to comment on Trump and Chesebro’s request.
The Georgia case originally involved 19 defendants and dozens of charges, making it the most extensive of the four criminal cases against the former and future president.
U.S. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told judges last week that he was dropping both federal cases against Trump, citing the Justice Department’s longstanding policy of avoiding prosecution while presidents are in office. One of the charges charged him with storing classified documents at his Florida mansion. Another accused him of plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election he lost.
President Trump asked a Manhattan judge on Monday to throw out his conviction, arguing that continuing to pursue the hush money case would be unconstitutional and “disrupt the institution of the presidency.” The New York case was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments. He went to trial, which resulted in a historic verdict making him the first former president to be convicted of a crime.
In the Georgia case, Mr. Trump and some of the other remaining defendants who have pleaded not guilty had already asked for Mr. Willis to be removed from the prosecution or have the charges dropped. They cited her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she appointed to lead the case.
Willis and Wade acknowledged having a relationship but said it began after he was hired and ended before the charges against Trump.
Mr. Trump and the other defendants argued that this relationship created a conflict of interest and that Mr. Willis and his firm should be disqualified from proceeding with the case. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis’ actions showed a “serious error in judgment,” but found no conflict of interest to disqualify him. . He said she could continue prosecuting as long as Wade recused himself, which she did.
An appeal against the ruling is still pending, but a decision should be made by March.
Chesebro was indicted in a massive indictment in August 2023, along with Trump and 17 others, alleging they participated in a broader scheme to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Months later, just before his trial, he reached an agreement with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy.
After McAfee dropped the charges to which he pleaded guilty in September, his attorneys asked Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee on Wednesday to vacate the plea.
“In Georgia, a defendant cannot plead guilty to a charge that does not constitute a crime,” defense attorney Manny Arora wrote, adding that if defense attorneys do not invalidate the plea, Chesebro’s legal It added that it would be a violation of the constitutional right to process.
Prosecutors say Mr. Chesebro convinced a group of 16 Georgia Republicans to sign a certification falsely claiming that Mr. Trump had won Georgia and falsely claiming that he was the state’s “duly elected and eligible” electors. He claims that he was part of a conspiracy to do so. He pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one felony count of conspiracy to commit false filings in connection with filing documents in federal court in Atlanta.
In his September ruling, McAfee wrote that penalizing people for filing certain documents in federal court “helps states narrow the scope of material that can be evaluated by federal courts and allows states to control their own legal proceedings.” It will hurt operations.” He concluded that the count should be struck out “as outside the jurisdiction of this state.”
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