US President-elect now faces eight charges instead of the 13 in the original indictment
US President-elect Donald Trump and his lawyers this Thursday asked an appeals court to dismiss the case against him for alleged election interference in Georgia, saying it “lacks jurisdiction.”
Trump, and 14 others, were charged in 2021 by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis with participating in a scheme to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, which President Joe Biden won by about 17 thousand votes.
Last September, the judge responsible for the trial, Scott McAfee, dismissed several charges against the president-elect.
Trump now faces eight charges instead of the 13 in the original indictment.
The case is stalled in the Georgia Court of Appeals, which lawyers asked to “confirm its lack of jurisdiction to continue hearing” the case now that Trump is President-elect.
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer in the case, said the defense also asked the court to instruct the trial court to dismiss the case immediately.
“Any ongoing criminal case against a sitting President must be filed in accordance with the Constitution of the United States,” Sadow reiterated in statements cited by Atlanta News First television.
The lawyer gave as an example the two federal criminal cases against Trump that were already filed by the Department of Justice after the Republican won the elections.
Last week, a federal appeals court accepted special prosecutor Jack Smith’s request to dismiss the case against the President-elect for handling confidential documents at his Florida residence.
Charges of assault at the Capitol against the Republican were also dropped.
On Tuesday, Trump’s defense requested the dismissal of his criminal case in New York, the only one in which he was convicted, but whose sentence was postponed indefinitely.
In that case, Donald Trump was found guilty on May 30 by a New York state court of “aggravated falsification of accounting to conceal a conspiracy to pervert the 2016 election.”
The case concerns the payment of 130 thousand dollars (123 thousand euros), disguised as legal fees, to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels to hide a sexual relationship in 2006, which Donald Trump denies.
But Judge Juan Merchan, who has already postponed the sentence on several occasions, allowed the President-elect’s lawyers to file an appeal to annul the proceedings, which they did on Monday.
The judge gave the Public Prosecutor’s Office a deadline of December 9 to respond, before ruling on the request.
