Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, June 22, 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Friday, March, 1, 2024, in Atlanta (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool).
The Georgia Court of Appeals on Thursday morning ruled that the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office and DA Fani Willis must be removed from the state’s felony prosecution of Donald Trump in a bombshell order that could mark the end of the final criminal case against the president-elect.
Trump and his 18 co-defendants had been angling to have Willis and her office removed from the case since January — initially over allegations that her romantic relationship with now-former special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest due to pecuniary motives.
A three-judge panel on the appeals court agreed in a 2-1 ruling, holding that the trial court erred in allowing Willis and her office to remain on the case after concluding that her relationship with Wade resulted in the “significant appearance of impropriety.”
“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 Trenton Brown wrote in the majority opinion that was joined by Judge Todd Markle. “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. 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.”
Willis and her office were “wholly disqualified” from the case but the panel ultimately rejected a request from the defendants seeking to have the indictment dismissed.
“While this is the rare case in which DA Willis and her office must be disqualified due to a significant appearance of impropriety, we cannot conclude that the record also supports the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the indictment under the appropriate standard,” the panel concluded.
