A judge has set a hearing for Aug. 10 on a motion by Donald Trump’s attorneys to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting possible criminal interference in the 2020 presidential election.
Legal observers consider Trump’s motion a long shot, but the hearing comes as Willis could be on the verge of asking a recently seated grand jury to hand up an indictments. All signs point to the former president being charged.
Senior Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster, in an order signed Friday, also directed both sides to submit their legal briefs on the issue no later than Aug. 8.
Schuster, a former Cobb County judge, was assigned the case after all of Fulton’s judges were recused because the motion was filed not just against Willis, but also against fellow Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
McBurney oversaw the special purpose grand jury that heard testimony from almost 75 witnesses in the election probe. On Wednesday, Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Atlanta lawyer Josh Archer to represent McBurney in the case, and Archer has been joined by attorney Katherine Carey.
Trump’s motion also seeks to prevent the DA’s office from using any evidence obtained by the special grand jury and to quash its final report, which recommends several unspecified people be indicted.
Trump’s filing — called a writ of mandamus and prohibition — seeks to head that off. It was initially filed before the Georgia Supreme Court, but the court unanimously declined to hear it and indicated that, if it had agreed to do so, the motion would have failed. Trump’s legal team then filed a similar motion in Fulton Superior Court.
Also Friday, Cathy Latham, the former chair of the Coffee County GOP and an alternate elector who cast her vote for Trump, joined Trump’s motion. And attorneys for former state GOP chair David Shafer, another alternate elector who has been notified he is a target of the investigation, made an entry of appearance in the case before Schuster.
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