Georgia’s Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request from former President Donald Trump to prevent officials from prosecuting him over his efforts to overturn his loss in the state’s 2020 presidential election tally.
The court in a unanimous order refused a push from Trump’s attorneys filed last week that called on the court to act in the case. The attorneys argued a special grand jury report should be discarded and that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be halted from seeking charges.
Willis began investigating after Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 to plead with him to “find” the votes he needed to win the state. Trump tried to call him more than a dozen times, and the official avoided taking the calls, according to an investigation by the House of Representatives.
The district attorney has suggested she may seek charges in the case. A grand jury convened on the matter in August.
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The state Supreme Court in its ruling this week said Trump’s filing didn’t have “the facts or the law necessary to mandate Willis’s disqualification by this Court at this time on this record.” The court also found the push from Trump’s attorneys didn’t prove his constitutional rights were violated.
And a Georgia judge earlier this year released parts of a grand jury report into Trump’s efforts, with the 23-member panel concluding that there wasn’t widespread election fraud during Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s attorneys in March in Fulton County Superior Court asked Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw a special grand jury in the case, to allow another judge to hear Trump’s arguments. The judge did not step aside, but he has not yet ruled.
Trump is already facing trials over hush money allegations in New York state and claims he mishandled classified documents in Florida. There is another ongoing investigation in Washington over efforts to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election in the Electoral College.
Contributing: David Jackson and Bart Jansen, USA TODAY; Associated Press