Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump asked a Georgia appeals court Wednesday to dismiss the Fulton County racketeering case against him, arguing that a “sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal.”
According to papers sent to the Georgia Court of Appeals, Trump’s lawyers said that the 2020 election interference charges should be dropped because “he is President-Elect and will soon become the 47th President of the United States.” They said that continuing to charge and prosecute him by the State of Georgia was invalid under the Constitution.
The case has been held up for most of the year because Trump’s lawyers are appealing a decision that turned down their request to stop Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office from prosecuting the case because they have a personal stake in it.
Last month, the appeals court abruptly cancelled the hearing on Willis’ disqualification without giving a reason. The hearing was supposed to happen this week.
Steven Sadow, Jennifer Little, and Matthew Winchester, who are lawyers for Trump, said in their filing that the fact that Trump won the election means the case should be thrown out completely.
They pointed to a legal memo from the Justice Department that said presidents can not be charged while they are in office. The memo helped the Justice Department decide last month to drop two federal criminal cases against Trump. However, the case in Georgia is a state case, not a federal case.
In his filing, Trump said that the same rules should be used in all cases and asked the judges to act “well before the inauguration of President Trump.”
The appeals judge “should dismiss his appeal for lack of jurisdiction with directions to the trial court to immediately dismiss the indictment against President Trump,” the filing stated.
The DA’s office refused to comment when asked.
Trump used to be charged with four different crimes. The Georgia case was one of them. The cases against the federal government over classified documents and election interference were thrown out last month.
This year, Trump was found guilty of felony charges in a case in New York. However, his sentencing has been put on hold indefinitely while the judge considers Trump’s requests to dismiss that case.