ATLANTA (CN) — A Fulton County judge on Monday rebuked Donald Trump's latest bid to block an investigation expected to lead to a future indictment of the former president related to criminal interference with Georgia's 2020 elections.
In a searing 9-page order, Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that Trump and Cathy Latham, former Coffee County GOP chair and an “alternate” GOP elector who joined the former president’s motion, lack legal standing to challenge the investigation because indictments have yet to be made.
"The movants' asserted 'injuries' that would open the doors of the courthouse to their claims are either insufficient or else speculative and unrealized," the judge wrote.
"They are insufficient because, while being the subject (or even target) of a highly publicized criminal investigation is likely an unwelcome and unpleasant experience, no court ever has held that that status alone provides a basis for the courts to interfere with or halt the investigation."
Judge McBurney's order dismisses and denies a motion by Trump’s Atlanta-based attorneys, filed in March, which sought to disqualify Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney spearheading the investigation into possible “multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere."
The motion also attacked McBurney for his handling of the special purpose grand jury, which was impaneled by the court last year at Willis' request to subpoena 75 witnesses for testimony and gather evidence. It accused the probe of being conducted “under an unconstitutional statute” and “through an illegal and unconstitutional process” that violated the former president's due process rights.
Latham, who greeted data technicians hired by Trump's campaign attorney Sidney Powell to copy confidential election data from voting machines at the Coffee County elections office in January 2021, joined the motion in May. She was named as one of the at least 18 known "targets" of the investigation last summer.
"After formal charges are brought, the locus of power, authority, and jurisdiction shifts to the courts. Arguments like those being made prematurely in the pending motions can be more effectively (and reasonably) presented and ruled upon when the full picture of who is being charged with what has been painted," McBurney wrote.
"Guessing at what that picture might look like before the investigative dots are connected may be a popular game for the media and blogosphere, but it is not a proper role for the courts and formal legal argumentation."
The denial aligns with the expectations of legal experts who agreed with Willis' team that Trump and Latham had no standing and called their arguments meritless.
In seeking to disqualify Willis, Trump’s attorneys of The Findling Firm and Jennifer Little Law accused the district of attorney, who is seeking a second term in the 2024 election, of "fundraising for her reelection campaign on the back of this case" and linked an increase in campaign donations to the campaign — mostly from out-of-state donors — to a series of tweets from a Democratic political strategist beginning July 2022.
In Monday's order McBurney found no existing conflict of interest for Willis because there is no evidence of any "direct financial interest" that she or any of her team members have in the outcome of the case, and because none of them have previously represented Trump or Latham.
Trump's amended motion and last-ditch effort to thwart the investigation was filed just four days after the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously declined to hear Trump’s writs of mandamus and prohibition petition. The court indicated that, had it agreed to do so, the motion would have failed.
Senior Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster set an Aug. 10 hearing on the motion. The former Cobb County judge was assigned the case after Chief Judge Ural Glanville recused the entire judicial bench of the Fulton County Court from hearing the motion, due it being filed against a fellow county judge and the county's top prosecutor.
Willis says she plans on announcing her indictment decisions within the next three weeks, as the case is being presented to a criminal grand jury empaneled this month. Seated until Sept. 1, the panel will hear hundreds of felony cases from prosecutors.
At least 12 out of 16 of the grand jurors in the Fulton County panel that hears the case must vote in favor of the charges for an indictment to go through.
Willis has called for heightened security preparations from local, state and federal law enforcement around Atlanta and instructed much of the courthouse staff to work remotely for the month of August, implying that she is likely seeking charges against Trump.
In a letter to Chief Judge Glanville and other county officials, Willis asked that no trials or in-person proceedings be held at the courthouse between Aug. 7 and 18, although the building will remain open to the public. Orange barricades have already been erected outside the courthouse entrance.
“The work is accomplished,” Willis, a Democrat, told Atlanta’s WXIA-TV Saturday. “We’ve been working for two and a half years. We’re ready to go.”
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