On November 19, 2024, US President-elect Donald Trump attended the sixth test flight launch ceremony of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, USA.
Brandon Bell | via Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump asked Georgia Court of Appeals Wednesday, effectively ending a criminal case related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 state election defeat presidential election.
Trump’s lawyer Steven Sadow Ask the Court of Appeal in a document affirmed that it lacked jurisdiction over the case and then directed a trial-level state court in Atlanta to “summarily dismiss” the indictment against the president-elect.
Sado argued that the Georgia court lost jurisdiction over the case because Trump won the 2024 election.
other Trump’s defense attorney On Tuesday, he made similar arguments, asking a New York state court judge to dismiss the hush-money criminal case against him.
Under the U.S. Constitution, “a sitting president is completely immune from state or federal prosecution or any criminal prosecution,” Sadow wrote in the Georgia filing on Wednesday.
Sadow wrote that although Trump won’t be sworn in until Jan. 20, the appeals court should “investigate its jurisdiction” to continue hearing appeals “before the inauguration.”
“This investigation should result in this court finding that neither this court nor the trial court has jurisdiction to entertain any further criminal prosecution against President Trump because it is unconstitutional for the State of Georgia to continue to indict and prosecute President Trump,” he wrote.
The criminal case had been put on hold before the election as Trump sought in the appeals court to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her romantic relationship with a prosecutor on his team .
In a separate statement Wednesday, Sado noted that special counsel Jack Smith recently dropped two federal criminal indictments against Trump because of Trump’s electoral defeat of the vice president. Kamala Harris November.
The federal cases are related to Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss to the president Joe Biden The preservation of classified government documents during the 2020 national election and after Trump leaves the White House in January 2021.
Smith’s move leaves only two criminal cases pending against Trump: in Fulton County, Georgia, and in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Trump was convicted in Manhattan in May of all 34 counts of falsifying business records related to allegations that his then-personal attorney, Michael Cohen, made a secret to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election. (Stormy Daniels) in connection with the $130,000 payment.