A Georgia appeals court on Thursday booted Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D)’s office from the 2020 election interference case against President-elect Trump over her relationship with a top prosecutor on the case.
The panel described Willis’s relationship with ex-special prosecutor Nathan Wade as a “significant appearance of impropriety.”
The court declined to outright dismiss Trump’s indictment, but disqualifying Willis’s office throws the future of the case further into doubt, which was already complicated by Trump’s impending return to the White House.
“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,” Judge E. Trenton Brown III wrote in the court’s ruling.
“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,” it continued.
The decision leaves open a theoretical possibility another prosecutor could take over the case, but the path forward remains precarious. Trump’s legal team has separately sought to dismiss all his criminal prosecutions now that he is president-elect.
The Hill requested comment from Willis’s office, Trump attorney Steve Sadow and defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents one of Trump’s co-defendants and brought the initial claim against Willis and Wade.
Willis charged Trump and more than a dozen of his allies last summer for allegedly entering a monthslong unlawful conspiracy to overturn President Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.
The revelation of the romance between Willis and Wade, whom the district attorney hired to spearhead the Trump prosecution, created a months-long detour in the case.
After a whirlwind hearing in February that saw both prosecutors take the stand, Judge Scott McAfee, who oversees the trial proceedings, found the romance amounted to an appearance of a conflict.
The judge said the prosecution could move ahead if Wade stepped aside, which he quickly did.
For months, Trump and his allies have appealed that ruling the Georgia Court of Appeals, insisting the district attorney could not be allowed to move forward. In the meantime, the trial proceedings grinded to a halt.
The appeals court panel in Thursday’s ruling rejected Trump’s arguments that the romance amounted to an actual conflict — agreeing that it was only an appearance of one — but said the judge was wrong to conclude that Willis could move ahead.
“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,” the appeals court wrote.
Judge Ben Land dissented from the other two judges on the panel, suggesting that the appeals court should defer to the trial judge’s findings instead of interfering with their discretions.
“Where, as here, a prosecutor has no actual conflict of interest and the trial court, based on the evidence presented to it, rejects the allegations of actual impropriety, we have no authority to reverse the trial court’s denial of a motion to disqualify,” Land wrote. “None. Even where there is an appearance of impropriety.”
Willis could appeal the ruling to the state’s Supreme Court. But if that effort fails, the case against Trump and his allies will be handed over to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia.
It would follow the same trajectory as when Willis’s office was previously disqualified from prosecuting Georgia Lt. Gov Burt Jones (R) in the case after she fundraised for his political opponent.
The council mulled how to proceed for nearly two years before ultimately declining to bring charges.
Updated 10:26 a.m.
