Former President Donald Trump has filed a motion to dismiss the criminal case that has been brought against him in Fulton County, Georgia, NBC News reports.
This is the same case that has been brought against Trump and nearly 20 other co-defendants by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D).
Willis alleges that Trump and the other defendants committed crimes when they attempted to challenge Georgia's results in the 2020 presidential election. The charges range from racketeering to conspiracy to soliciting a public official to violate their oath of office.
Trump and the other defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the charges. Trump maintains that Willis' motivation is not legal but political - that Willis is attempting to use the American justice system to derail Trump's 2024 campaign.
Trump and his legal team filed the motion to dismiss on Monday.
The New York Times reports, "Former President Donald J. Trump asked a judge on Monday to throw out most of the 13 charges against him . . ."
The outlet adds, "A flurry of one-page motions from Mr. Trump’s Georgia lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, piggyback off more expansive recent motions by some of the other 18 defendants in the case, including one filed on behalf of the lawyer Ray Smith III."
The Times goes on to describe Smith's motion, writing:
Among other things, Mr. Smith’s motion says that the charge of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO — which all 19 defendants face — seeks to “punish protected First Amendment activity” and fails to “sufficiently allege the existence” of a racketeering enterprise whose goal was to overturn Mr. Trump’s narrow 2020 election loss in the state.
This all appears to be the beginning of an aggressive defensive effort against Willis by Trump and his legal team.
It is unclear whether Trump will have any success with this motion to dismiss. It is mostly likely, given all of the circumstances, that he will not.
Trump, however, has a much better chance of being successful on a motion that he has yet to file, namely, a motion to remove the case from state court to federal court. Trump has indicated that he plans to file such a removal motion, but, at the time of this writing, he has yet to do so.
It is true that Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, has filed such a motion and lost. But, legal experts still believe that it is likely that Trump would win on a removal motion, given the fact that Trump, as president, was clearly a federal officer.
Willis has yet to respond to Trump's motion to dismiss.
Such a response is what would be expected to happen next in this case.
