SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

Trump Copies Co-Defendants’ Playbook in Challenging Georgia Criminal Charges

In a series of filings, the former president borrowed legal arguments already used by Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro.

In a series of Monday filings in Georgia, lawyers for Donald Trump sought to filch a number of legal arguments already deployed by his co-defendants to challenge the charges brought against them in a sweeping racketeering indictment last month. Trump’s lawyers mooched off of Rudy Giuliani’s motion to quash his charges, made Friday in a filing that imaginatively called the Fulton County indictment “a conspiratorial bouillabaisse.” They also reached into the playbook of “particularized arguments” being used by indicted attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who challenged the validity of all the defendants’ racketeering charges last week, and separately made a motion to dismiss the rest of his own charges. The requests were made within hours of Team Trump filing a motion asking to disqualify the judge overseeing the case, suggesting that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan may already believe Trump “should be prosecuted and imprisoned” thanks to her previous comments.