Former President Donald Trump has been handed a new legal setback, with the Georgia Supreme Court shooting down his bid to end the criminal investigation into his alleged attempt to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.
The court ruled unanimously on Monday against Trump's push to bury a special grand jury's final report that recommends charges, along with his bid to prevent Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from investigating the ex-president any further.
Last week, Trump's defense team asked the Georgia Supreme Court and the Fulton County Superior Court to disqualify Willis and quash the special grand jury's report. Willis is expected to announce whether she will be seeking charges against the former president next month.
In the five-page decision issued on Monday, Georgia's high court wrote that Trump had "not shown that this case presents one of those extremely rare circumstances" where intervention is warranted and that he would not be "entitled to the relief he seeks" even if the court were to step in.
The petition from Trump's legal team argued that Willis' investigation and the special grand jury did "reputational harm" to the former president while displaying a "flagrant disregard" for his constitutional rights and using evidence that had been "illegally obtained."
Trump's lawyers also seemingly acknowledged that their requests were unlikely to succeed. They noted that no similar case had been successful "in 40 years" but urged the court to take the "extremely rare" step of granting their requests since "never has there been a case like this one."
Willis and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who was responsible for overseeing the special grand jury, were also accused in the petition of having "trampled the procedural safeguards for [Trump's] and other's rights."
"The whole process is now incurably infected," Trump's lawyers wrote. "And nothing that follows could be legally sound or publicly respectable."
The special grand jury does not have the power to charge Trump with any crimes, while Willis was also not obliged to follow its recommendations. Last week, Willis seated two additional grand juries that do have the power to bring forward an indictment against the ex-president.
The decision to deny Trump's effort to quash the special grand jury's report and disqualify Willis was the latest in a series of recent court losses for the former president as he continues his 2024 bid to return to the White House.
Trump is already facing dozens of felony charges at the federal level and in New York state, with the potential for Willis' probe and Special Counsel Jack Smith's ongoing January 6 investigation to compound his legal strife.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the office of Trump and members of the former president's legal team via email on Monday.
