Georgia courts should dismiss a sprawling criminal case against Donald Trump for his attempts to reverse his election loss in the state in 2020 because his incoming presidency grants him “complete” immunity from any criminal proceedings, the president-elect has argued.
In a filing on Wednesday, the former president called on a Georgia appeals court to dismiss the case against him for his efforts to overturn election results, arguing that the state no longer has jurisdiction.
“A sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal,” according to attorney Steven Sadow.
The case is currently in front of the Georgia Court of Appeals while the court considers whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from prosecuting him. Trump now wants the case to be tossed out “well before” his inauguration on January 20.
The court should find that both the appeals court and trial court “lack jurisdiction to entertain any further criminal process against President Trump as the continued indictment and prosecution of President Trump by the State of Georgia are unconstitutional,” Sadow argued.
Appeals court judges should then dismiss the case “with directions to the trial court to immediately dismiss the indictment against President Trump,” he added.
The case brought by Willis’s office accuses the former president and his co-defendants of leading a “criminal enterprise” to overturn his loss, using a so-called “fake elector” scheme to falsely assert his victory, seizing voting machines, intimidating election workers, and pushing the state’s top election official to “find” votes he would need to win.
The filing came hours after the architect of that so-called “alternate” elector plot asked to revoke his guilty plea.
Last year, Kenneth Chesebro agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents — the fraudulent electoral college certification for the state’s election results.
In September, nearly a year after Chesebro’s plea, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that three counts in the indictment involving false statements were unconstitutional. On Wednesday, Chesebro argued that his charge should be dismissed on similar grounds, despite his year-old plea.
Two other co-defendants in the case — Trump-allied attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis — also reached plea deals with prosecutors in exchange for their potential testimony and cooperation.
But the case has been effectively frozen at the appellate court for months. After a series of dramatic hearings involving allegations of misconduct in her office, McAfee allowed Willis to stay on the case as long as the special prosecutor with whom she was once romantically involved agreed to leave.
Trump and his allies appealed that decision, while two federal criminal cases against the former president came to a standstill. Special counsel Jack Smith has effectively ended those cases, for now.
The president-elect’s historic criminal conviction in New York earlier this year could also be called into question, as the judge overseeing the case considers Trump’s attorney’s attempts to dismiss the case altogether after his victory in the 2024 race.
