A Georgia state judge shot down former President Donald Trump’s effort to halt a potential indictment over alleged interference in the 2020 election Monday.
Trump filed a motion to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, block potential prosecution and quash the special grand jury’s final report in March. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney rejected the motion to prevent prosecution Monday on the grounds that Trump had not yet been indicted and therefore lacked standing.
“[W]hile being the subject (or even target) of highly publicized criminal investigation is likely an unwelcome and unpleasant experience, no court ever has held that that status alone provides basis for the courts to interfere with or halt the investigation,” the judge wrote. “The professed injuries are also speculative and unrealized because there is, as of yet, no indictment that creates the genuine controversy required to confer standing.”
In a footnote, the judge referred to Trump’s use of the investigation as “political capital.”
“And for some, being the subject of a criminal investigation can, à la Rumpelstiltskin, be turned into golden political capital, making it seem more providential than problematic,” he wrote.
The motions to quash the report and disqualify the district attorney were also dismissed as moot.
Willis’ investigation involves a phone call Trump allegedly made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to “find 11,780 votes.” Willis hinted an indictment will likely be made between July 31 and Aug. 18, according to The Associated Press.
Senior Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster is scheduled to hear a separate challenge seeking to have Willis disqualified on August 10.
Trump’s legal team has argued the case is unlawful, claiming in their filing that “at every turn, the Supervising Judge and the District Attorney have trampled the procedural safeguards for Petitioner’s and other’s rights” such that nothing resulting from the process could be “legally sound or publicly respectable,” according to ABC News.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment
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