President-elect Trump on Wednesday asked to throw out his criminal election interference charges in Georgia following his election victory.
Trump’s two federal indictments have already been tossed, and the former president is attempting to do the same in his New York hush money case.
The new filing aims to similarly toss Trump’s fourth and final criminal case, which accuses him of entering a months-long unlawful conspiracy to overturn President Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.
That case has not yet reached trial and for months has remained frozen as an appeals court takes up Trump’s argument that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) should be disqualified over her romance with a top prosecutor on the case, Nathan Wade, who was forced to step aside.
“Accordingly, well before the inauguration of President Trump, this Court should inquire into its jurisdiction to continue to hear this appeal,” wrote Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in Georgia, in the filing.
“That inquiry should result in this Court deciding that both this Court and the trial court lack jurisdiction to entertain any further criminal process against President Trump as the continued indictment and prosecution of President Trump by the State of Georgia are unconstitutional,” Sadow continued. “President Trump respectfully submits that upon reaching that decision, this Court should dismiss his appeal for lack of jurisdiction with directions to the trial court to immediately dismiss the indictment against President Trump.”
Trump was charged in the case alongside more than a dozen of his allies, who could still face trial even if his charges are dismissed.
The president-elect’s filing comes hours after one of his co-defendants who pleaded guilty, Kenneth Chesebro, filed court documents seeking to invalidate his plea deal struck in October of last year.
Chesebro, who wrote a series of memos devising the Trump campaign’s alternate electors scheme after the then-president’s loss in 2020, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. It allowed him to avoid jail time and have his record wiped after he completed a five-year probation period. His probation would terminate after three years if he had good behavior.
But later, Georgia Judge Scott McAfee, who oversees the trial proceedings, invalidated that charge for other defendants in the case who did not plead guilty and challenged the count’s validity.
Updated at 4:43 p.m. EST
