Attorney: Trump couldn't face Fulton County charges if he wins back The White House – Atlanta News First
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – Donald Trump’s attorney in Fulton County suggested on Friday that his client could not be charged in the sweeping election indictment brought earlier this year if he were to win back the White House in 2024.
Although Trump’s Georgia attorney Steven Sadow requested a trial start even earlier than the Aug. 5 date proposed by prosecutors, he said if the trial is delayed until after Trump theoretically won the presidency in 2024, prosecutors would have to wait until Trump’s term expired to bring him to court.
“If your client does win election in 2024, could he even be tried in 2025,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee asked Sadow.
“The answer to that is, believe that under the supremacy clause and his duty as president of the United States, this trial would not take place at all until after he left his term of office,” Sadow said.
That status would only apply to Trump — and only if he were to win. It’s a tenuous argument, attorneys told Atlanta News First on Friday, but one that may not be wholly without merit. The trial would not be delayed for any of the other defendants in the case, only Trump, who is currently the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.
Outside court, Sadow said he was referring to presidential immunity. The supremacy clause states that federal laws take precedent over state and local laws when the two conflict.
McAfee, for the first time on Friday, also noted the possibility of breaking up — or severing, in legal terms — the defendants into two separate trials. No hard decisions were made on that, or on scheduling in court.
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Attorneys for several defendants came before McAfee on Friday to argue various motions ranging from extensions to filing deadlines, to complete dismissal of the charges against their clients.
At times seeming more of a civics lesson than a court hearing, some attorneys argued their clients had the right to question the results of the 2020 election, even if they turned out to be inaccurate or outright wrong in their approach.
“The Constitution and the Supreme Court have said, we’re going to put up with a heck of a lot of speech before we quiet it, because the result of telling somebody or prosecuting somebody for saying something about an election that a DA disagrees with is terribly, terribly dangerous in our society,” said Chris Anulewicz, an attorney for defendant Robert Cheely. “The state wants to jail the defendants, and it tells us this, for not accepting those results, for not accepting that President Trump lost, and for not agreeing that Georgia’s vote counting process was pristine. Somebody’s false statement is another person’s truth.”
McAfee didn’t make a ruling on the timing of a trial start, but did call attorneys back in mid-December for more discussion.
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