ATLANTA — Donald Trump has taken his efforts to derail the 2020 election investigation all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Attorneys for the former president filed petitions in two Georgia courts Friday as part of Trump's efforts to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and bury a special purpose grand jury's report into potential election interference.
Trump's legal team filed documents in Fulton County Superior Court and state supreme court aimed at Willis and Fulton judge Robert McBurney. They come as a previous superior court motion to quash the jury's report and disqualify Willis hasn't received a ruling.
The new documents make those same requests.
Potential indictments in the investigation are expected within the next month, but Trump's attorneys want any proceedings "related to or flowing from" the special purpose grand jury's work to be stopped until the matter is resolved.
The attorneys — Drew Findling, Jennifer Little, and Marissa Goldberg — want Willis and McBurney to comply with the "lawful duties of their office" and seek to "bar their further contortion of legal processes" which violates Trump's constitutional rights, according to the filing.
The attorneys want either court to rule on the new motions. In their filing, the attorneys said they went to the state supreme court because their previous motion in Fulton Superior Court was ignored.
"This should be shocking. Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time," both court filings state. "But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump."
Fulton County District Attorney's Office declined to comment on the filing.
In March, Trump filed the initial motion to bury the report and prevent the district attorney's office from using any evidence collected by the special purpose grand jury. In addition to seeking Willis' disqualification, Trump's team also wanted a judge other than McBurney to rule on their motion.
McBurney oversaw the special purpose grand jury investigating whether Trump and his allies criminally interfered in the 2020 election. The panel compiled their findings in a report.
Only portions of the grand jury's report have been released at this point — the introduction, the conclusion and a portion in which jurors said one or more witnesses may have lied in their testimony. However, foreperson Emily Kohrs previously told media outlets that the report recommended more than a dozen indictments.
Trump's attorneys have argued that public statements and actions taken by Willis, McBurney, and members of the special grand jury "violated the principles of fundamental fairness and due process" rights of Trump and other parties under investigation, according to the March filing.
The former president's legal team also argued that the Georgia law governing special purpose grand juries is vague and unconstitutional, unfairly impacting people of interest in the investigation.
Trump's attorneys have argued the special purpose grand jury should have been classified as civil rather than criminal. The misclassification gave Willis access to evidence she shouldn't have, according to the filings. Similar arguments have been rejected by judges.
The two Fulton County grand juries that could hear evidence in the election investigation were sworn in Tuesday.
Willis has previously said that potential indictments will come before Sept. 1., but she's previously hinted that charging decisions will likely happen in early to mid-August.
Michael Moore, former U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Georgia who is now a partner with Moore Hall in Atlanta, said Friday it's not surprising that Trump's Atlanta attorneys would file these petitions.
“You have to come in if you're a lawyer for someone like the former president and ask the court to move quickly and convince them that there's a reason for a court to get involved, to prohibit some miscarriage of justice or an alleged miscarriage of justice," Moore said.
Trump's attorneys, Moore said, are preparing their appeals before the courts even hear the case.
"They're raising constitutional questions, they're raising issues about the appropriateness of the special purpose grand jury, the actions of a sitting superior court judge, as well as the actions of a sitting district attorney who is prosecuting the case," Moore said. "Really what they're doing is what any good lawyer would do, and that is to sort of protect the record. The filing is essentially perfecting the record so that when these issues come up later, there'll be an adequate basis for appeal. There's no question that this is going to be a matter that finds its way through the appellate court system. And I think ultimately at the U.S. Supreme Court."
This is a breaking story and will be updated.