The judge overseeing the Fulton County Special Grand Jury has rejected Trump’s bid to throw out the special grand jury report and disqualify Fulton County, GA District Attorney Fani Willis.
In a ruling filed on Monday, Judge McBurney wrote:
The District Attorney’s Office has been doing a fairly routine and legally unobjectionable job of public relations in a case that is anything but routine. None of what movants cite rises to the level of justifying disqualification and all of it, collectively,. falls far short of what prompted the District Attorney’s disqualification from the investigation into Lieutenant Governor Jones. The prosecutor is not a neutral party and does not need to pretend to be: she has a cause she has sworn to pursue, and in that pursuit of justice, she “is necessarily a partisan in the case. If [s]he were compelled to proceed with the same circumspection as the judge and jury, there would be an end to the conviction of criminals.” State v. Sutherland, 190 Ga. App. 606, 607 (1989) (citation omitted). For these reasons, Trump and Latham’s motions to disqualify the District Attorney are DENIED.
There is an additional basis for denial, not reached here but certainly one preserved for pursuit should this Order be appealed: waiver. As the District Attorney noted in her response, a motion to disqualify the prosecutor in a criminal case “must be raised promptly after the defendant learns of a potentially disqualifying matter.” Reed v. State; 314 Ga. 534, 546 (2022). Much, if not all, of what serves as the movants’ grounds for disqualification is quite dated, having occurred months before their motions were filed — and movants offer no explanation for their delay in seeking disqualification.
Former President Trump and alternate Elector Latham’s motions to preclude any State prosecuting agency from using evidence derived from the Special Purpose Grand Jury’s work are DISMISSED for lack of standing. Their motions to quash (or expunge) the Final Report of the Special Purpose Grand Jury are DENIED as moot. And their motions to disqualify the District Attorney and her office are DENIED.
In other words, just because Trump doesn’t like being prosecuted, it doesn’t mean that he can throw the evidence out and get the prosecutor disqualified. The ruling today marks Trump’s second defeat on this same issue in less than a month. Trump already lost before the Georgia Supreme Court while trying to disqualify Willis.
Trump and his lawyers are trying everything possible to get the Special Grand Jury report thrown out because the report will contain the evidence that will make up the backbone of a potential Trump indictment.
Georgia courts seem to be running out of patience with Trump, as McBurney noted in his ruling that the former president knew that his motion was dead on arrival because he has already been ruled against on these same issues in other courts.
Donald Trump is about to be indicted in Georgia, and he is out of options to stop it.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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