By Katelyn Polantz | CNN
Former President Donald Trump is asking a court to dismiss several criminal charges against him in the Georgia 2020 election interference case.
His filings on Monday are Trump’s opening salvo of legal arguments to challenge the state-level charges.
The filings indicate Trump wants to adopt the legal arguments his racketeering co-defendants Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro and Ray Smith have already made in court filings.
Giuliani filed his challenge Friday, asking Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to toss his indictment due to “deficiencies,” his lawyers argued, that render it invalid. Chesebro, the pro-Trump lawyer who devised the “fake electors” scheme, filed a similar challenge last month that argued the indictment “fails to sufficiently set out the charge or any violation of the law.”
Smith, an attorney for Trump’s 2020 campaign in Georgia, filed his extensive motion challenging the indictment also on Monday, arguing that the indictment had “voluminous” defects and that the state failed to meet the racketeering statute.
Motions like these are common at the start of a criminal case, and they are rarely successful.
The former president is asking for the state charges to be tossed even as he has indicated in court filings that he may ask for the case to be moved to federal court, where he can try to invoke protections for federal officials.
Trump faces 13 counts – including racketeering, conspiracy charges and soliciting a public official to violate their oath of office – in the sprawling indictment brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last month against him and 18 co-defendants for their roles in attempting to reverse Georgia’s 2020 election results. All 19 defendants – including Trump, Giuliani, Chesebro and Smith – have pleaded not guilty in the case.