The Georgia Supreme Court speedily announced its unanimous rejection of former President Donald Trump’s legal team’s petition to end a state investigation into election interference. It came only three days after Trump’s lawyers submitted their filings, the New York Times reports. Trump’s team had sought a court order that would throw out the work of a special grand jury in Atlanta and disqualify District Attorney Fani T. Willis from the proceedings. She has overseen the investigation into whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia. Most of the court’s nine justices were originally appointed by Republican governors. The case so far has played out in Superior Court in Atlanta.
Trump’s lawyers acknowledged in their filing that they faced long odds. In their ruling, the justices said Trump’s team had “not shown that this case presents one of those extremely rare circumstances in which this court’s original jurisdiction should be invoked, and therefore, the petition is dismissed.” They also said that Trump’s lawyers had not presented “either the facts or the law necessary to mandate Willis’s disqualification.” Trump’s lawyers had sought in March to end the investigation with a motion to quash much of the evidence that Willis’s team had collected since the investigation began in early 2021 and to take Willis off it. But the Superior Court judge handling the case has yet to rule. Willis has signaled that any indictments will come in the first half of August. To bring any charges, Willis must now seek indictments from a regular grand jury.