Trump Strikes Out in Effort to Suppress Georgia Grand Jury (2)

A judge has removed a major hurdle for Donald Trump to be indicted in Georgia over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election result by denying his request to toss out evidence gathered by a special grand jury.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on Monday also denied Trump’s request to disqualify the county district attorney, Fani Willis, from the probe. The judge rejected the argument that Willis had demonstrated bias against the former president and instead criticized Trump’s own comments about the case.

“The drumbeat from the District Attorney has been neither partisan (in the political sense) nor personal, in marked and refreshing contrast to the stream of personal invective flowing from one of the movants,” the judge wrote.

The ruling appears to clear the way for Willis to charge Trump over his role in trying to overturn his loss in 2020 to President Joe Biden in the swing state, adding to Trump’s federal indictment in Florida over his handling of classified documents and other legal woes. Willis has said she may seek an indictment in the grand jury term that runs from July 11 to Sept. 1, and she’s asked Fulton County judges to schedule no trials in the weeks of Aug. 7 and 14.

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McBurney wrote that his ruling appears to moot a parallel case Trump filed challenging the Fulton County investigation in the same trial court. The Georgia Supreme Court previously dismissed yet another challenge Trump had tried to pursue. The judge criticized Trump for filing the other cases, saying he’d done so “perplexingly, prematurely, and with the standard pugnacity.”

McBurney, in rejecting a challenge at this stage to the special grand jury’s report, held that Trump’s claimed injuries from the investigation are “speculative and unrealized,” depriving him of legal standing to challenge the probe before any indictment has been issued.

“They are insufficient because, while 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,” McBurney wrote.

A spokesperson for Willis’ office declined to comment. Trump’s attorney Drew Findling and a spokesperson for the former president were not immediately reached for comment.

McBurney ruled on a March 20 filing by Trump’s lawyers attacking the special purpose grand jury, which heard 75 witnesses but lacked the authority to charge anyone. Trump’s filing called that process “confusing, flawed and, at-times, blatantly unconstitutional.”

If Trump is charged, the judge wrote in Monday’s opinion, he could renew his objections to how Willis’ office had pursued the investigation.

“Guessing at what that picture might look like before the investigative dots are connected may be a popular game for the media and blogosphere, but it is not a proper role for the courts and formal legal argumentation,” he wrote.

The judge rejected Trump’s claim that Willis should be disqualified because of her public statements about the case, saying her public relations campaign has been “fairly routine” and “legally unobjectionable” for a high-profile case that is “anything but routine.”

“The prosecutor is not a neutral party and does not need to pretend to be: she has a cause she has sworn to pursue,” the judge wrote.

(Updates with detail from ruling.)

To contact the reporters on this story:
David Voreacos in New York at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net;
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net;
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman

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