Fani Willis excluded from Trump’s Georgia election interference case

A Georgia appeals court ruling removes Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis from the sprawling election interference case against Donald Trump and more than a dozen of his allies, upending ongoing criminal proceedings against the president-elect a few weeks before his return to the White House. .

A panel of judges appointed by Republicans determined On Thursday, the prosecutor’s former romance with a special prosecutor hired to handle the case amounted to a “significant” conflict of interest that warranted his dismissal from the prosecution team.

The court, however, did not accept the former president’s “extreme” argument that the case be dropped altogether, potentially leaving the case to another prosecutor.

Willis’ lawyers filed notice of his intention to appeal the court’s decision. Representatives of the prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to The Independent» requests for feedback.

“This decision ends a politically motivated persecution against the next president of the United States,” Trump lawyer Steve Sadow said in a statement.

The 2023 case filed by Willis’ office accuses the former president and his co-defendants of conducting a “criminal enterprise” to overturn his loss, using a system of “fake voters” to falsely assert his victory, seizing voting machines, intimidating election workers and pressuring the state’s top election official to “find” the votes he would need to win.

Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants — including his allies Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman — were charged under the state’s RICO law, used to target organized crime, and faced to a long list of other charges related to an alleged crime. plan to overturn the state’s election results.

Four of Trump’s original co-defendants — including attorneys Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell — pleaded guilty to some charges last year after reaching plea deals with prosecutors.

In March, after several days of hearings on allegations that Willis benefited financially from the hiring of Nathan Wade, with whom she had been romantically involved, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled determined that Willis or Wade should step down.

Wade then tendered his resignation.

Trump and his co-defendants appealed, arguing that “nothing in the law – anywhere – says that the remedy for an appearance of impropriety is the disqualification of one apparently conflicted attorney but not another.”

Lawyers representing the district attorney argued that the case hinged on Trump’s attempts to publicly “challenge” and defame her as political revenge, and that testimony and documents presented in court showed “no evidence that the district attorney benefited financially.”

The allegations against Willis were based on salacious rumors, gossip and innuendo intended to “embarrass and harass” her, while indefinitely delaying the criminal case against Trump and his allies, Willis’ lawyers argued in court .

The decision rendered Thursday by the Republican-appointed judges does not dismiss the charges against Trump and his co-defendants.

“Although this is the rare case in which DA Willis and his 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 judges wrote.

Justice Ben Land, dissenting, said he was “particularly troubled” by the majority’s decision, which took the trial court’s decision “and converted it into something completely different.”

“It is not our place to question trial judges or substitute our judgment for theirs,” he added. “We do not find the facts but defer to the factual findings of the trial court where there is evidence to support them.”

This is one of two criminal charges filed against the former president at the state level.

On May 30, a Manhattan jury criminally convicted Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme to cover up politically damaging stories about his affairs leading up to the presidential election in 2016.

After lengthy legal battles, the special prosecutor overseeing two federal criminal cases against the former president effectively froze them, for now, as the Justice Department would soon enter unprecedented territory with the prosecution of a president in exercise.