TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In an amicus brief filed Sept 21, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to quash the subpoena on Senator Lindsey Graham to testify before a Fulton County grand jury in Georgia. Democrats overwhelmingly control that county, and did nothing for more than a year before engaging in a flurry of headline-grabbing activity on the eve of the upcoming midterm elections, AAPS points out.
“Didn’t Fulton County get the memo about this important public policy against using prosecutions to cause headlines near elections?” AAPS asked rhetorically in its amicus brief. Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice requires that prosecutors stand down for at least 60 or 90 days prior to an election, yet the Fulton County prosecutors have been a factory of headlines to disparage Republicans, AAPS informs the court.
“Our constitutional system has a check-and-balance on every potential abuse of power,” AAPS observes. “This federal court is the primary check-and-balance against a county proceeding that contravenes public policy and the democratic process for elections to federal offices” and should “rein in Fulton County both to quash its subpoena of Lindsey Graham and end its irresponsible interference with any future election.”
“The nearly two years of silence and then sudden headline-generating work by the Fulton County Democrats in this case cannot credibly be described as a mere coincidence,” states AAPS’s amicus brief. “For more than 20 months the officials in Fulton County generated few headlines, and then on the brink of the midterm election there has been a flurry of activity to generate very disparaging headlines against top Republican leaders.”
“It chills this First Amendment right to threaten prosecution or haul someone before a distant grand jury for hostile questioning based on disputing a reported election result,” AAPS points out. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump should not be “made political target practice through a misuse of prosecutorial authority,” AAPS adds.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943. Its motto is omnia pro aegroto (everything for the patient).
