Trump Attempts To Impede Georgia Election Probe While Charges Await

In a new court filing on Monday, former President Donald Trump sought to prevent the prosecution of him and a few of his associates for crimes connected to his attempts to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in Georgia's 2020 election.

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Trump requested a court to throw out the findings of a special grand jury in Atlanta and to prevent the use of any of its evidence in future criminal prosecutions.

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The Fulton County District Attorney's Office, which has been leading the criminal investigation, was also asked to withdraw from the case in his court petition.

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Since it began two years ago, the Georgia investigation has been seen as the most likely to result in criminal charges being brought against Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nominee and the subject of three other significant ongoing criminal investigations.

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The Atlanta grand jury finished hearing testimony and going over the prosecution's evidence earlier this year. The panel then suggested that a number of individuals, who have not been publicly identified, be charged with crimes.

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The investigation focuses on Trump's aggressive attempt to persuade Georgia election authorities to throw out enough votes cast for Biden to overturn Biden's victory in the state after Election Day 2020.

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Georgia was one of many swing states that Biden won in the popular vote, giving him the advantage against Trump in the Electoral College, the body that actually chooses the president of the United States.

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The phone discussion between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, in which Trump requested that Raffensperger "get 11,780 votes" for him, attracted the grand jury's attention.

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Trump claims that the grand jury "was conducted under an unlawful statute, through an illegal and unconstitutional process" in his 483-page court brief.

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As evidence that "this grand jury was improperly managed or, worse, illegally directed from the beginning," the brief also refers to recent comments made by the forewoman of the grand jury to media outlets and later statements made by other members of the panel.

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Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, is also charged with violating prosecutorial guidelines and acting without respect for the seriousness of the situation or the participants' constitutional rights, according to the petition.

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Further inquiries for comment to a spokeswoman for Willis and the lawyers who filed the document on Monday on behalf of Trump were not immediately returned.

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Trump's filing requests that Chief Judge Ural Glanville of the Fulton County Superior Court rule on the move rather than Judge Robert McBurney, who has been overseeing the grand jury.

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"The Supervising Judge's inappropriate conduct tainted the proceeding and similarly violated ideas of fundamental fairness and due process," the document claims.

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According to the filing, McBurney "made inappropriate and prejudicial comments relating to the conduct under investigation as well as potential witnesses' invocation of the Fifth Amendment," which is the right under the Constitution not to be forced to testify in a way that might bring them into disrepute.

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The lawsuit comes as a new grand jury in New York City is set to indict Donald Trump over a $130,000 hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels by his former attorney Michael Cohen just before the 2016 presidential election.

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Trump is the subject of two additional criminal investigations by the United States in addition to the ones in Georgia and Manhattan. Office of Justice.

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One of those probes refers to Trump's efforts to overturn his defeat in the national election of 2020 and to obstruct the joint session of Congress certification of the Electoral College results on January 6, 2021. An invasion of the United States prolonged that proceeding for several hours. During a rally where Trump urged followers to "fight" against the certification, hundreds of his fans descended upon the Capitol.

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The DOJ is also looking into Trump's removal from office in January 2021 of hundreds of federal papers, many of which were highly classified. While federal authorities were requesting the return of those records from Trump's residence at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, the investigation is also looking into whether he and others, including his lawyers, impeded the course of justice.