On Monday, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s request to halt the district attorney’s investigation into possible interference in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election by the former president and his friends.
The petition that was rejected was one of two that Trump’s attorneys filed last week in several Georgia courts, both of which sought to effectively halt District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into whether there had been “coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections.”
The Georgia High Court was petitioned to bar Willis from looking into Trump and to have a report from the special grand jury she used to aid her probe thrown out.
The nine-judge Georgia Supreme Court issued a succinct, unanimous decision, concluding that the relief sought by Trump “is not the sort of relief that this Court affords, at least absent extraordinary circumstances that Petitioner has not shown are present here.”
The court said, “Moreover, even if the petition were properly filed, Petitioner has not established that he would be entitled to the relief he seeks.”
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by a Trump spokesman.
The da’s office chose not to respond.
The Fulton County Superior Court is still considering a similar Trump petition that was submitted on Friday.
In both cases, a court order was requested that forbade Willis “from introducing any evidence obtained via the special purpose grand jury process to a regular grand jury.”
In February, the special grand jury’s foreperson, Emily Kohrs, appeared on NBC’s “Nightly News” to announce that more than a dozen people should be charged. Their identities remain a secret.
In his petition, Trump requested that both courts move quickly because Willis “has signaled that she will use the report — itself the fruit of contorted and coopted process — to secure an indictment against Petitioner within weeks, if not days.”
In March, Trump submitted a related petition to the Fulton County Superior Court. Robert McBurney, the judge who has presided over the grand jury probe, has not yet made a decision about that filing.
In January 2021, Willis began her extensive study. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has insisted that Willis, a Democrat, is engaging in a “witch hunt” with political overtones.
Willis has stated in letters to local law enforcement that she intends to seek indictments in the case during the first half of August.
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