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A Georgia prosecutor and her office should be removed from a criminal case against Donald Trump for alleged interference in the 2020 election, an appeals court ruled Thursday, the latest legal victory for the president-elect as he prepares to return to the House. White.
The Georgia Court of Appeals agreed with Trump and other co-defendants, including Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had created a significant appearance of impropriety due to their personal relationship. with Nathan Wade, an outside attorney hired to assist in the prosecution.
“While we recognize that an appearance of wrongdoing is generally not sufficient to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandatory and no other remedy will be sufficient to restore public confidence in the integrity of these procedures,” he wrote. the court in its decision.
While the appeals court’s decision stopped short of ordering the dismissal of the accusation, the decision deals a substantial blow to one of the most complex accusations brought against the now president-elect after he left the White House in 2020.
In August 2023, Willis filed the racketeering case against Trump and 18 others, alleging a sweeping scheme to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the state.
Several defendants have already pleaded guilty, including attorney Sidney Powell, who alleged widespread election fraud, and Jenna Ellis, a former Trump campaign lawyer.
But Trump and others have disputed the charges, focusing last year on Willis’s relationship with Wade, who was hired by the Fulton County district attorney’s office to help prosecute the case.
Michael Roman, a co-defendant and former Trump campaign official, asked the judge overseeing the case to disqualify Willis because of what he described as an “inappropriate and clandestine personal relationship” with Wade, from which she allegedly benefited in the form of gifts and expensive vacations. During a heated public hearing earlier this year, Willis acknowledged having a relationship with Wade, but denied that it would require her to step aside.
“These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020,” Willis said during the hearing. “I’m not being judged no matter how much you try to put me on trial.”
The trial judge declined to disqualify Willis and his office or dismiss the charge, although, he wrote, “a stench of mendacity remains.”
Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Defendants who appealed against that order said the trial court erred and that the indictment was tainted by what they alleged was a “significant appearance of wrongdoing.”
The appeals court agreed. However, he refused to grant what he described as “the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the accusation.”
Georgia state officials would need to assign another prosecutor to take over the case, a process that could take a long time and further delay any effort to pursue the case as Trump resumes the presidency.
The Georgia case was one of four criminal charges brought against Trump after he left office in 2020. Since then, a series of rulings (and his election victory in November) have all but ended the immediate legal threats that once they posed.
Two federal cases brought by U.S. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith were dropped after Trump won the election, due to a Justice Department policy that generally prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president.
A case brought by state prosecutors in Manhattan – over alleged “hush money” payments to an adult film actor – resulted in the historic first conviction of a former president earlier this year. However, sentencing was postponed indefinitely after Trump’s election victory.
Trump has also argued that a U.S. Supreme Court decision finding broad immunity from criminal prosecution for a president’s official acts would be an argument against pursuing the secret money case. Earlier this week, a judge denied his request to dismiss the case on those grounds, but an appeal is likely.
