Didn't take more than a couple of business days for Georgia's state supreme court to flush Team Trump's dumbass argument to try to end Fulton County DA Fani Willis's investigation into his 2020 election interference in the state.
The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday unanimously rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the 2020 presidential election probe and to quash a special purpose grand jury’s final report that recommends people be indicted.
Acting promptly to address Trump’s motion filed late Thursday, the state’s highest court said the former president’s legal team had failed to present “extraordinary circumstances” that warranted its intervention. As for Willis, Trump “has not presented in his original petition either the facts or the law” necessary to warrant her disqualification, the court said in an unsigned five-page order.
Willis has signaled that in the coming weeks she will ask one of two recently seated grand juries to hand up an indictment in the election probe. She has not said who could be formally charged, but Trump is expected to be one of the defendants.
With that on the horizon, Trump’s lawyers asked the state Supreme Court to put a halt to the grand jury proceedings and let their motion be heard. It also sought to prevent Willis from using any evidence obtained by the special grand jury, which heard testimony from almost 75 witnesses.
The state Supreme Court said the normal course of action would be for Trump’s legal team to file a petition first before a Fulton Superior Court judge, whose decision could then be appealed. Trump, the order said, cannot turn to the state’s highest court to try and “circumvent the ordinary channels for obtaining the relief he seeks without making some showing that he is being prevented fair access to those ordinary channels.”
Trump’s lawyers did file such a petition in Fulton Superior Court, saying they had done so out of an abundance of caution. No ruling has been issued in that case, which was filed Friday.
The state high court’s order indicated the Superior Court case is likely going nowhere. Even if Trump’s petition had been filed in an appropriate procedural posture, Trump “has not shown that he would be entitled to the relief he seeks,” the state Supreme Court’s order said.
I don't expect Trump will get anything, and Willis's indictment is expected sometime in the next six weeks or so, if not sooner. So we'll see Trump arraigned a third time this year on charges, and as Steve M notes, it'll probably raise his approval rating.
Trump's numbers have improved. Gallup says his polling average while he was president was 41%; in his final poll while he was in office, he was at 34%. In other words, he's 12 points more popular than he was in the immediate aftermath of January 6. Presidents' poll numbers tend to rise after they leave office -- but other presidents haven't been repeatedly indicted on felony charges. Trump's legal woes haven't hurt his polling at all -- just the opposite, in fact. Two indictments haven't hurt him. A third one probably won't either. Even if he's convicted somewhere, he'll appeal and tell everyone that the conviction wasn't the last word. His poll numbers suggest that half the country will accept that argument.
I want everyone to understand that all the things we find repulsive about Donald Trump are shrugged off by nearly half the public -- while Joe Biden's poll numbers are mediocre at best. As a result, Trump is polling better against Biden than he did in 2020, and he's polling better than he ever did against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Remember that he doesn't need to win the popular vote to win the Electoral College -- Republicans have a built-in advatange in the Electoral College now, primarily because Democrats' popular vote totals include millions of excess votes in California, and millions of votes in states where they're all but guaranteed to fall short (Florida, Ohio, Texas). And next year Biden will lose votes to whoever runs on the No Labels line, as well as to Cornel West on the Green Party line (who's getting campaign help from Jill Stein).
I know I'm repeating myself, but Biden is facing a much more difficult lift than most people realize. The evidence is in plain sight.
Trump will be at even higher numbers after the Georgia RICO charges and Jack Smith's remaining federal charges on 2020 election interference and now January 6th related crimes. There still could be other charges related to Trump's inaugural financing. If things keep going at this rate, he's going to be well above 50% as more and more Americans decide they want to be on the "winning" side when the purges start in 2025.
Watch.
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