Donald Trump asks Georgia court to dismiss criminal charges over election interference
4 December 2024, 20:59 | Updated: 4 December 2024, 21:18
Donald Trump has asked a Georgia appeals court to dismiss criminal charges he is facing over alleged election interference in 2020.
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In a five-page document, Mr Trump's lawyers argue that a sitting president should be "completely immune" to criminal charges.
It comes less than 24 hours after Trump's team called a New York court to dismiss his hush-money case.
“A sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal,” Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow wrote.
Mr Trump's team has said the case should be dismissed before he enters office in January, going as far as ordering the trial judge Scott McAfee to dismiss it altogether.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that a sitting president could not face federal, criminal charges.
Trump was indicted along with 18 people in a 41-charge sheet over alleged actions during the 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
The defendants listed include Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor who worked as Trump's lawyer, and Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff.
The indictment brands the defendants as a "criminal organisation" who "knowingly and wilfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favour of Trump".
Most seriously, it accuses them of breaching the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, more commonly referred to as Rico, which can lead to up to 20 years behind bars.
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It also accuses them of crimes including false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, conspiracy to defraud the state and theft and perjury.
Trump had previously branded the allegations "bogus."
His request to have charges dismissed comes after his lawyers requested the same for his New York hush-money case.
In May, the President-elect was convicted in New York of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Trump was found guilty in May of concealing a hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
"President Donald J. Trump respectfully submits this motion to dismiss the Indictment and vacate the jury’s verdicts...," his lawyers wrote in an official motion to dismiss submitted to the court on Monday.
"The Presidential immunity doctrine, the Presidential Transition Act, and the Supremacy Clause all require that result, and they require it immediately."
Alongside his election victory, Trump's team pointed to President Joe Biden's pardon of his son, Hunter earlier this week."
Yesterday, in issuing a 10-year pardon to Hunter Biden that covers any and all crimes whether charged or uncharged, President Biden asserted that his son was ‘selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,’ and ‘treated differently,’" they said.
"President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.’"
The former US President had pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts, and denied any sexual encounter with Daniels.
