As part of a never-ending series of motions to get his various criminal cases dismissed, Donald Trump’s attorneys are moving to dismiss charges against him in Georgia.
Donald Trump Declares Legal War
On Monday, former President Donald Trump’s attorney moved to throw out the majority of the charges against him as part of the RICO indictment in Georgia.
According to the New York Times, the motion “piggybacks” on an earlier one by another defendant in the case, Ray Smith III. The notion goes through the indictment and accuses prosecutors of trying to “punish protected First Amendment activity” while failing to “sufficiently allege the existence” of actual racketeering.
Two other defendants in the Georgia case, Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro, have previously used similar arguments.
Two defendants, Chesebro, and Sidney Powell, are currently scheduled to stand trial beginning on October 23.
Also this week, Trump motioned to disqualify the judge in one of his other criminal cases.
According to Reuters, Trump has called for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to be disqualified from his federal election interference case. That case currently has a scheduled trial date of March 2024.
The request is based on comments the judge made while sentencing a previous January 6 defendant in 2022, when she stated that the rioter was showing “blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”
Trump has frequently noted on Truth Social and elsewhere that the judge in the case is an Obama appointee, implying that only Trump-appointed judges are fit to preside over his cases.
The lawyers also called for the motion to be ruled on an “expedited’ basis,” per NBC News. Special Counsel Jack Smith was given three days to file any opposition to the response.
An analysis in the Washington Post this week by Aaron Blake stated that the judge’s past comments are “somewhat unremarkable in context” and “more of a messaging exercise than anything else.”
“The move fits neatly with Trump’s public-relations strategy of claiming a vast government conspiracy against him — and seemingly preparing to cast any adverse result as a consequence of the ‘witch hunt,’” Blake writes.
“The first thing to note is that Chutkan wasn’t freelancing here. In both cases, she was responding to the arguments of people who, like many of their fellow Jan. 6 defendants, pointed the finger at Trump for influencing their actions that day,” he said in the Post. “If Chutkan’s comments are problematic, it would seem to be because she acknowledged she had ‘my opinions’ about that matter, but she didn’t share them and was effectively summarizing the defendant’s argument.” He added that as many as nine judges had said similar things in their rulings in the cases of January 6 defendants.
“Judge Chutkan has, in connection with other cases, suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned. Such statements, made before this case began and without due process, are inherently disqualifying,” the former president’s lawyers said in their filing.
“Although Judge Chutkan may genuinely intend to give President Trump a fair trial — and may believe that she can do so — her public statements unavoidably taint these proceedings, regardless of outcome.”
Also this week, the Trump campaign, in a fundraising email, pointed at comments Judge Chutkan made about the January 6 rioting, compared with the violence that took place as part of the protests in the summer of 2020 following the killing of George Floyd.
“Now, there are some people who have compared the riots of January 6 with other protests that took place throughout the country over the past year and who have suggested that the Capitol rioters are somehow being treated unfairly,” Chutkan wrote in a 2021 sentencing ruling.
“I flatly disagree…People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent. But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
