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(Trends Wide) — Lawyers for former US President Donald Trump have asked a judge to throw out the final report and evidence from a special grand jury in Georgia that spent months probing efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump’s lawyers also asked that a judge disqualify the Fulton County district attorney’s office from overseeing the investigation, according to new court documents.
“President Donald J. Trump hereby proposes to strike down the report of the [jurado investigador de propósito especial] SPGJ and prevent the use of any evidence derived from it, as it was done under an unconstitutional statute, through an illegal and unconstitutional process, and by a disbarred district attorney who violated the rules of procedure and acted without regard to the seriousness of the circumstances and the constitutional rights of those involved,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the documents.
The motion to quash the work of the special grand jury and disqualify the district attorney’s office from bringing any prosecution in the case is Trump’s first effort to intervene in the long-running investigation that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis , a Democrat, has performed. She also reveals the aggressive approach Trump’s legal team is likely to take to fight potential charges the former president could face.
So far, no one has been charged in Georgia.
Willis’s office is considering filing racketeering and conspiracy charges, Trends Wide reported Monday.
Trends Wide requested comment from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.
The wide-ranging objections from Trump’s lawyers span a series of decisions by the judge who oversaw the grand jury, the conduct of the Fulton County district attorney and a variety of interviews conducted last month by the foreman of the special grand jury.
A special grand jury investigating Trump and his associates completed its work in December, and a judge who oversaw the panel made small snippets of the report public in February. After the partial publication, a leader of the panel went on a media tour during which he indicated that approximately a dozen people had been recommended for criminal charges.
Speaker Emily Kohrs declined to say whether the special grand jury recommended criminal charges for Trump, telling Trends Wide last month: “There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about, I don’t think you’ll be surprised.”
Special grand juries in Georgia can issue subpoenas and collect evidence, such as documents and testimony, but cannot issue indictments. Instead, they write a final report that includes recommendations about whether someone should face criminal charges. It is then up to the district attorney to decide whether to seek indictments from the regularly seated grand juries.
Trump’s lawyers raised objections to several issues related to the special grand jury process, including the president’s series of interviews and a recent media interview with other special grand jury members, who spoke anonymously to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“The results of the investigation cannot be trusted and therefore should be suppressed given the constitutional violations,” Trump’s lawyers argued in the new filing. “The president’s public comments themselves also violate notions of fundamental fairness and due process and contaminate any future grand jury group.”
The Trump team also argued that Willis’s office should have been disqualified from overseeing the entire case when it was prevented from investigating now Georgia Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, a Trump ally who served as a fake voter after the 2020 election. They also took issue with media interviews Willis has provided.
“The resulting prejudicial stain cannot be removed from the results of the investigation or from any future prosecution,” Trump’s lawyers wrote, adding that the media interviews “violate due process rules and constitute forensic misconduct, and their activity on social media creates the appearance of impropriety that compounds the need for disbarment.”
Trump’s legal team also raised objections to how Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney oversaw the grand jury and the interviews it provided after the panel’s work concluded. Trends Wide was among the news outlets that interviewed McBurney.
“The supervising judge made inappropriate and prejudicial comments related to the conduct under investigation, as well as the witnesses’ possible invocation of the Fifth Amendment,” according to Trump’s lawyers. “He misapplied the law and subsequently denied appellate review knowing that his application of the law in such a manner had major implications for the constitutionality of the investigation.”
They argued that McBurney erred in finding the special grand jury a criminal investigative body, a decision that weighed heavily with other judges who compelled out-of-state witnesses to comply with subpoenas they received to appear before the panel.
