The former president files several fresh motions to toss out Fulton County election interference charges

The former president files several fresh motions to toss out Fulton County election interference charges

Attorneys for Donald Trump claim that the former president didn’t have “fair notice” that his attempts to reverse his Georgia loss in the 2020 presidential election could result in criminal charges against him.

A flurry of filings in Fulton County Superior Court on Monday argue that the sprawling election interference case against Mr Trump “consists entirely of core political speech at the zenith of First Amendment protections”.

Attorneys for the former president want the case dismissed on grounds that he has “presidential immunity” from actions while in office, that he was already acquitted for similar allegations in his second impeachment trial, and that he was never told that what he was doing in the state – where he is charged as part of an alleged racketeering scheme to unlawfully subvert the state’s election results – could be prosecuted.

  • WashedOver
    81·
    10 months ago

    It’s not like this is his first dealings with election recounts. He was involved with shutting down Jill Stein’s attempts at recounts for the 2016 election.

    In November 2016, a group of computer scientists and election lawyers including J. Alex Halderman and John Bonifaz (founder of the National Voting Rights Institute) expressed concerns about the integrity of the presidential election results. They wanted a full audit or recount of the presidential election votes in three states key to Donald Trump’s electoral college win—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—but needed a candidate on the presidential ballot to file the petition to state authorities. After unsuccessfully lobbying Hillary Clinton and her team, the group approached Stein and she agreed to spearhead the recount effort.[74]

    A crowdfunding campaign launched on November 24, 2016, to support the costs of the recount, raised more than $2.5 million in under 24 hours,[75] and $6.7 million in nearly a week.[76] On November 25, 2016, with 90 minutes remaining on the deadline to petition for a recount to Wisconsin’s electoral body, Stein filed for a recount of its presidential election results. She signaled she intended to file for similar recounts in the subsequent days in Michigan and Pennsylvania.[77]

    President-elect Donald Trump issued a statement denouncing the recount request saying, “The people have spoken and the election is over.” Trump further commented that the recount “is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded.”[78]