 "Georgia court disqualifies district Attorney Willis from Trump 2020 case")
A Georgia appeals court disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her entire office from handling the 2020 election interference prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump, but will allow the case to continue.
The Georgia Court of Appeals’ 2-1 decision Thursday is a major setback for state prosecutors in one of the two remaining criminal cases pending against Trump as he prepares to reenter the White House next month.
The court removed Willis and her office citing the “appearance of impropriety” stemming from her relationship with a former member of the prosecution team, but denied Trump’s bid to have the indictment tossed out.
The opinion didn’t specify what the next steps would be in the case but if Willis doesn’t take the fight to the state supreme court it will likely be sent to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to reassign it.
A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump, in an interview with Fox News, called the prosecution “entirely dead” and said that he and his co-defendants should “receive an apology.” His attorney Steve Sadow called the ruling “well-reasoned and just” in a statement.
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Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor in Georgia, said that whichever district attorney takes control could review the entire prosecution effort to determine whether to move forward, and if they did, would have to navigate the unprecedented question of whether to proceed with state charges against a sitting US president.
Copeland said she would be “surprised” if the next prosecutor in charge opted to press the case against Trump once he’s back in the White House. But that wouldn’t stop the remaining co-defendants from potentially facing trial, she added.
Other Trump Cases
The two federal criminal cases against Trump were already dropped after his November win by a Justice Department special counsel given its longstanding policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. A state court judge in Manhattan is deciding whether the hush money case against Trump can proceed.
In the Georgia case, the sprawling racketeering indictment accused Trump and some of his key allies from the 2020 campaign of carrying out an election interference conspiracy under state law. Willis secured several early plea deals, but then the case became mired in controversy following the revelation of her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Although Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was critical of Willis’ conduct, he ruled earlier this year that she and her office could continue to oversee the Trump prosecution after Wade resigned.
McAfee faulted Willis for a “tremendous lapse in judgment” and questioned whether witnesses were honest on the stand about the timing of Willis and Wade’s relationship. But McAfee didn’t find an actual conflict of interest, rebuffing arguments by Trump and his co-defendants that her handling of the case was affected by the prospect of financial gain from her relationship with Wade. Willis had paid Wade more than $650,000.
The state appellate panel that considered the matter held that while McAfee’s solution was forward-looking, removing only one of the key players from the situation “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.”
‘Rare Case’
Although “appearance of impropriety” usually doesn’t require the disqualification of a prosecutor, the appeals court said, the Trump prosecution was the “rare case” where “no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.”
Judge Benjamin Land dissented, writing that his colleagues were breaking with at least 43 years of state court precedent in finding that an appearance of impropriety — as opposed to an actual conflict of interest — was enough to disqualify Willis and her office.
“I am particularly troubled by the fact that the majority has taken what has long been a discretionary decision for the trial court to make and converted it to something else entirely,” Land wrote.