District Attorney Fani Willis holds a news conference in the Fulton County Government Center after a grand jury voted to indict former U.S. President Donald Trump and 18 others on Aug. 14, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Cristiano Monterrosa | Afp | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump and eight other defendants accused of illegally attempting to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 election filed a formal application Friday to appeal a judge’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the job. case.
Trump and other defendants had sought to have Willis and his office dropped from the case, saying her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee earlier this month found there was no conflict of interest that would force Willis to drop the case, but said the prosecution was “hampered by an appearance of impropriety.”
McAfee’s ruling said Willis could continue his prosecution if Wade left the case and the special prosecutor resigned hours later. Lawyers for Trump and other defendants then asked McAfee to allow them to appeal his ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals, and he granted that request.
Filing an appeal to the court of appeal is the next step in that process. The Court of Appeal has 45 days to decide whether to accept the matter.
Allegations that Willis had benefited unduly from her romance with Wade have turned the case on its head for weeks. Intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives emerged in court in mid-February, overshadowing serious allegations in one of four criminal cases against the former Republican president. Trump and 18 others were indicted in August, accused of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia.
The appellate filing states that McAfee erred in not disqualifying both Willis and Wade from the case, saying that “providing District Attorney Willis with the ability to simply remove Wade confounds logic and is against Georgia law.”
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, said in a statement that the case should have been dismissed and “at a minimum” Willis should have been disqualified from continuing to prosecute it. He said the Court of Appeal should grant the request and consider the merits of the appeal.
A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.
Willis used Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a broad anti-racketeering statute, to charge Trump and the 18 others. Four people charged in the case pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
McAfee clearly felt that Willis’ relationship with Wade and his employment as lead prosecutor in the case created an appearance of impropriety, and his failure to disqualify Willis and his entire office from the case “is a clear legal error that requires a annulment,” defense attorneys wrote. in their application.
Given the complexity of the case and the number of defendants, the application states, multiple trials will likely be necessary. Failure to disqualify Willis could now require any verdict to be overturned, and it would be “neither prudent nor efficient” to risk having to go through “this painful, controversial and expensive trial” multiple times, it said.
In his ruling, McAfee cited a lack of appellate guidance on the issue of disqualifying a prosecutor for forensic misconduct, and the appeals court should step in to set such a precedent, lawyers argue.
Ultimately, defense attorneys argued, it is critical that prosecutors “remain and appear disinterested and impartial” to maintain public confidence in the integrity of the justice system.