Donald Trump’s attorney in Georgia has asked the state’s appeals court to dismiss election interference charges against the president-elect, arguing that a sitting president is “completely immune from indictment or any criminal trial, state or federal ”.
Attorney Steve Sadow’s filing with the Georgia appeals court asks the court to dismiss Trump’s appeal of a lower court decision to allow Fulton district attorney Fani Willis to serve as prosecutor in the case. remain, because the Fulton Superior Court no longer has this right. jurisdiction, given Trump’s election victory.
The filing cites the Justice Department’s decision to end federal prosecution against Trump last month and a 2000 finding by the Office of Legal Counsel that the president cannot be subject to the criminal enforcement of local prosecutors.
“The Constitution prohibits ‘plac[ing] in the hands of a single prosecutor or grand jury the practical power to interfere with the ability of a popularly elected president to carry out his constitutional functions,” Sadow wrote, citing the OLC memo.
That memo emerged in the wake of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, when perjury charges were being considered in the scandal over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The rule was to be applied to federal prosecutions, but the agency concluded that the ban was categorical — that it did not matter what the charges were — as long as the president was still in office.
Sadow’s filing does not ask the court to dismiss the case against the remaining co-defendants in the election interference case, who do not have the same constitutional protections as a president.
