The Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump's sprawling election-racketeering criminal case has scheduled a Jan. 25 hearing to consider a request from one of the former president's co-defendants seeking access to any records showing Fulton County prosecutors coordinating with President Joe Biden's White House.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee's one-page order issued Thursday summons attorneys for former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and District Attorney Fani Willis to his Atlanta courtroom at 2 p.m. Jan. 25 for a hearing to consider the discovery request.
Clark, 56 and seen as a possible second term Trump attorney general pick, has pleaded not guilty to the state charges and continues pushing to get his case bumped from Fulton County Superior Court into U.S. District Court.
At the same time, Clark's lawyers in a Jan. 12 motion as they prepare for a potential state trial asked for McAfee's OK to force Willis into turning over any evidence she has showing meetings with the federal government, including the White House counsel's office.
Clark's lawyers in their court filing said they had written to Willis' office seeking those materials but the DA's office replied it "had fully complied with all of its statutory discovery and disclosure obligations and declined to provide the information we had requested.''
"Granting (purely for the sake of argument) the State’s position that the state law criminal discovery statutes do not require them to produce the information, it is elementary that those statutes do not exhaust the scope of the State’s disclosure obligations," Clark's lawyers added.
Later in their motion, Clark's attorneys argued the information they're seeking regarding contacts between Willis' office and the Biden officials "may be material to the outcome of the case or helpful to the defense, if it supports an argument that the prosecution of this case is tainted with partisan political objectives coordinated with, suggested or directed by the White House."
"The political benefit of this prosecution to President Biden and his political party are obvious and a current fact of political life," the lawyers added, noting public reporting that shows "clear and obvious collaboration" between state officials, the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection and the Biden White House.
"All defendants should know the nature of the State’s communications with the White House Counsel’s Office to assess whether they can mount a defense based on selective or political prosecution in violation of their rights to due process and the equal protection of the laws," they added. There is a plausible basis for suspicion on that score, and therefore sufficient justification to require production of the requested information that might support a defense motion."