Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis looks on during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse on March 1, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Alex Slitz-Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images
A Georgia appeals court on Thursday disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from overseeing the criminal election interference prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump and other defendants.
But the Court of Appeals let stand the indictment against the defendants, who are accused of crimes related to their efforts to overturn Trump’s loss in Georgia’s 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
However, Trump’s criminal defense attorney argued later Thursday that the ruling on Willis put an effective end to the case against the president-elect.
Willis’ office in a filing said it planned to ask the Georgia Supreme Court to overturn the appeal court’s disqualification of her from Trump’s case.
The appeals court’s decision overturns a Fulton County Superior Court judge’s ruling that allowed Willis to remain on the case despite arguments by Trump’s attorneys that she should be disqualified due to the impropriety of her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the top prosecutor whom she had picked to lead the case.
The Court of Appeals in its decision said that the remedy offered by Judge Scott McAfee — which let Willis remain on the case if Wade withdrew from handling it — was improper.
“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” the appeal court said.
“The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring,” the court said.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, U.S. March 9, 2024.
Alyssa Pointer | Reuters
“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.”
But the appeals court also wrote, “We affirm, however, the denial of the appellants’ motion to dismiss the indictment.”
Trump’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, in a statement said, “The Georgia Court Of Appeals in a well-reasoned and just decision has held that DA Fani Willis’ misconduct in the case against President Trump requires the disqualification of Willis and her office.”
” The Court highlighted that Willis’ misconduct created an “odor of mendacity” and an appearance of impropriety that could only be cured by the disqualification of her and her entire office,” Sadow said. “As the Court rightfully noted, only the remedy of disqualification will suffice to restore public confidence. This decision puts an end to a politically motivated persecution of the next President of the United States.”
The Georgia case is one of the two criminal cases pending against Trump.
The president-elect was convicted earlier this year in New York state court of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has yet to be sentenced in that case.
The judge in that case on Monday rejected Trump’s request to toss out the convictions and indictment on a claim of presidential immunity. Prosecutors in the case had used testimony and other evidence from former White House employees, which Trump’s lawyers argued ran afoul of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave presidents presumptive criminal immunity for so-called official acts in office.
But the judge, Juan Merchan, is still considering other arguments Trump’s lawyers have made for dismissing the case.
After Trump’s election in November, federal prosecutors dropped two criminal case against him due to a Department of Justice policy that bars prosecutions of sitting presidents.
In one of those cases, Trump was charged with crimes related to his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 national election. In the other, he was charged with crimes connected to his withholding of classified government records after leaving the White House and with withholding them from federal officials when they sought their return.
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