July 17 (UPI) — A Georgia court has rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to block Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation into alleged election interference following the 2020 presidential race.
“This is not the sort of relief that this court affords, at least absent extraordinary circumstances that petitioner has not shown are present here,” all nine justices of the Georgia Supreme Court wrote Monday in the five-page order.
Willis has indicated that indictments in the election probe, which centers on alleged pressure Trump and his allies put on Georgia officials following the election to reverse his loss to Joe Biden, could come in the next few weeks as a grand jury convenes to consider possible charges.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has stated that Trump asked him in 2020 to “find” nearly 12,000 votes to reverse Biden’s victory in the battleground state.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump said after his election loss, according to Raffensperger.
A similar motion filed in March in Fulton Superior Court, which also seeks to disqualify Willis in the investigation, is still pending.
Trump’s lawyers filed the latest petition by claiming Willis violated Georgia’s rules, which govern grand juries. They said the motion was filed because it was justified by “extraordinary circumstances.”
“Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time,” the motion said. “But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”
“Stranded between the supervising judge’s protracted passivity and the district attorney’s looming indictment, Trump has no meaningful option other than to seek this court’s intervention,” the motion stated.
“He makes no showing that he has been prevented fair access to the ordinary channels,” the high court wrote in response Monday. “He is asking this Court to step in and itself decide the motions currently pending in the superior court.”
