“Baseless”: Legal experts say Trump’s bid to avoid Georgia indictment is “completely without merit”

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump filed a motion in Georgia court on Monday seeking to suppress the release of a report of a special purpose grand jury that investigated efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. 

The motion filed in Atlanta also seeks to “preclude the use of any evidence derived” from the special grand jury’s investigation, and it requests that the office of Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, be disqualified from the case.

“Given the scrutiny and the gravity of the investigation and those individuals involved – namely, the movant President Donald J. Trump, this process should have been handled correctly, fairly, and with deference to the law and the highest ethical standards,” Trump lawyer Drew Findling wrote. “Instead, the [special grand jury] involved a constant lack of clarity as to the law, inconsistent applications of basic constitutional protections for individuals brought before it, and a prosecutor’s office that was found to have an actual conflict yet continued to pursue the investigation.”

Willis spent the last year leading a “special purpose grand jury” to look into election interference by Trump and his allies. 

For at least eight months, the special grand jury heard testimony from 75 witnesses, including some of Trump’s closest aides and advisers. In January, Willis told a judge that charging decisions in the case are “imminent.”

Even as Trump’s lawyers have tried to quash the release of the report and criticized the special purpose grand jury, calling it “confusing, flawed, and at-times, blatantly unconstitutional,” their latest filing will not impact the ongoing investigation, legal experts say.

“The motion is completely without merit,” Clark Cunningham, a professor of law and ethics at Georgia State University, told Salon. “At this point, the former president cannot show that he has been harmed in any way by the actions of the special grand jury, by the actions of any individual member of the grand jury, the district attorney, or Judge McBurney. He will have to renew these arguments only after he has been indicted, if he is.” 

Trump’s lawyers in their filing argued that the Georgia law that allows for special grand juries is “unconstitutionally vague,” and doesn’t specify whether a grand jury is handling a criminal or civil matter.

Findling also argued that the entire process was defective and should be thrown out. He said comments made by special grand jurors to media, as well as by the presiding judge in the case, Robert McBurney, tainted any future criminal proceedings. 

Trump’s legal team also criticized the grand jury’s forewoman, who went on a media tour last month, in which she said multiple people were recommended for indictment.

“The foreperson’s public comments in and of themselves likewise violate notions of fundamental fairness and due process and taint any future grand jury pool,” his lawyers wrote in the legal filing.

---

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

---

While the Fulton D.A.’s office could be “reasonably critiqued” for engaging too much with the media or wading into ordinary politics, the idea that an actual conflict of interest exists that would require recusal is “baseless,” assistant law professor at Georgia State University Anthony Michael Kreis told Salon.

“It seems that the rule Trump’s legal team is advocating for is any Democratic prosecutor who wants to hold the former president to account is inherently biased to the point of requiring removal,” Kreis said. “It is a similar pattern to what we’re seeing now with the Manhattan case where there is a political strategy to tar the reputation and motivations of prosecutors ahead of potential indictments.”

He added that his legal team’s motion to quash isn’t necessarily to win but to “gum up the process in appeals, which the Trump team could plausibly accomplish here,” but it may also ironically push the prosecutors to expedite the process on their end.

Over the weekend, Trump claimed in a social media post that he would be arrested on Tuesday as part of an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into a hush money payment he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. 

A special counsel for the Justice Department is also investigating Trump’s handling of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago and his efforts to overturn the election results and his conduct related to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

In Georgia, Willis and her team are said to be closely examining Trump’s phone calls and the role he played in assembling an alternate slate of electors.

Willis appears to be building a case that could target multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud, or charges related to racketeering, according to The New York Times.

“There is little doubt in my mind that Donald Trump will face charges for conspiring to commit election fraud in Georgia,” Kreis said. “The bigger question is when, whether the DA will attempt to use racketeering statute, and who else might be swept into a broad conspiracy charge.”