Trump tells Geor­gia court to end Fani Willis RICO case

Trump’s legal team argues that his sta­tus as a sit­ting pres­i­dent, effec­tive upon inau­gu­ra­tion on Jan. 20, 2025, ren­ders him immune from any crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion under the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion.

Defense attor­ney Steve Sad­ow told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er the case should be dis­missed “now that he is Pres­i­dent-elect and will soon become the 47th Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” adding that two fed­er­al crim­i­nal cas­es, in which pros­e­cu­tors were attempt­ing to con­vict Trump of sub­vert­ing the 2020 elec­tion and improp­er­ly han­dling clas­si­fied doc­u­ments, have now been dis­missed by the Jus­tice Depart­ment in light of his elec­tion win.

The fil­ing draws heav­i­ly on the prin­ci­ple of pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty, as detailed by a long-stand­ing DOJ pol­i­cy, which argues that crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against a sit­ting pres­i­dent would under­mine the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and vio­late the suprema­cy clause of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Trump’s legal team also cit­ed con­cerns about local bias in the Geor­gia case, fram­ing Willis’s pros­e­cu­tion as a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed act that con­flicts with fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions.

“’[S]tates have no pow­er … to retard, impede, bur­den, or in any man­ner con­trol, the oper­a­tions’ of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” the motion states, ref­er­enc­ing key Supreme Court rul­ings such as McCul­loch v. Mary­land and Trump v. Vance.

Trump’s attor­neys argue that state pros­e­cu­tions are even more con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pre­car­i­ous than the two fed­er­al cas­es that were dis­missed last week, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they orig­i­nate from a “local pros­e­cu­tor, who not only answers to a tiny seg­ment of the Amer­i­can elec­torate but is act­ing in clear oppo­si­tion to the will of the cit­i­zens of Geor­gia as reflect­ed by the recent elec­tion results.”

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The motion calls on the Geor­gia appel­late court to con­firm its lack of juris­dic­tion over the case, argu­ing that any crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against a sit­ting pres­i­dent must cease. It fur­ther requests that the tri­al court be direct­ed to dis­miss the indict­ment against Trump imme­di­ate­ly.

The case aris­es from Trump’s alleged efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results in Geor­gia, charges Willis brought under the state’s Rack­e­teer Influ­enced and Cor­rupt Orga­ni­za­tions Act. Trump and sev­er­al co-defen­dants charged along­side him have con­sis­tent­ly denied the alle­ga­tions, fram­ing the case as part of a broad­er pat­tern of polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion.