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Fani Willis Is Officially Kicked Off Trump's Case

Mia Cathell
Mia Cathell  |  December 19, 2024 9:50 AM

UPDATE: Trump's lead defense attorney Steve Sadow said in a statement shared with Townhall, "As the Court rightfully noted, only the remedy of disqualification will suffice to restore public confidence."

"This decision puts an end to a politically motivated persecution of the next President of the United States," said Sadow.

***Original article***

The Georgia Court of Appeals has officially disqualified Fulton County DA Fani Willis from prosecuting President-elect Donald Trump and his remaining co-defendants in the crumbling 2020 election interference case.

According to the 31-page decision handed down Thursday, the state's appeals court ruled that there was, in fact, a conflict of interest that arose when Willis hired special prosecutor Nathan Wade and proceeded to have an undisclosed affair with him during the prosecutorial process.

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Applying the "appearance" standard, the three-judge panel—comprised of all GOP appointees—concluded that the "significant" "appearance of impropriety" was indeed "improper."

"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 ruling reads, finding that the lower court's "remedy" was insufficient.

Judge Scott McAfee, the Fulton County trial judge who had presided over the Democrat DA's prosecutorial misconduct proceedings earlier this year, ultimately allowed Willis to remain in charge of the case, so long as Wade resigned. Within hours of McAfee's non-disqualification decision, Wade recused himself for the sake of the case's continuance.

After "carefully considering" the trial court's findings, the appeals court found that McAfee "erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office."

"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," Thursday's decision says, noting that such an appearance of wrongdoing was "caused by the conduct of [Willis in her capacity as] a public prosecutor."

Removing only Wade "did not cure the already existing appearance of impropriety" and the "odor of mendacity" that lingered in the affair's aftermath, the legal body wrote.

Additionally, the anti-Trump DA's "church speech," in which she injected race into the case during extrajudicial statements before a black Atlanta congregation, factored heavily into the "forensic misconduct" aspect of the defense's appeal.

Therefore, the trio of judges reversed the trial court's denial of the defense's motion to disqualify Willis.

However, they denied the defense's motion seeking the indictment's dismissal altogether.

As of Thursday, the indictment against Trump is now an "orphan" without a prosecutor, Townhall columnist Phil Holloway remarked.

Since the appeals court declined to toss out the case entirely, that means another prosecutor could, in theory, take over.

Accordingly, while Willis is "wholly disqualified" from prosecuting Trump's case, her deputy DAs, "whose only power to prosecute a case is derived from the constitutional authority of the district attorney who appointed them," also hold "no authority to proceed," per the appellate court order.

Georgia's non-partisan agency, called the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council, will decide next steps: whether to appoint a different district attorney or a special prosecutor or decline to move forward with the matter at all.

The odds are low that any other prosecutor in Georgia would be willing to take the case, rendering it "dead," Holloway quipped.

Whoever does, they'd have to make an independent judgement on what charges to prosecute, legal analyst Jonathan Turley explained.

Of course, Willis can appeal to the state's Supreme Court.

"There's a good chance the Supreme Court of Georgia reverses the Court of Appeals on this," assessed Georgia State University professor Anthony Kreis. "They don't create a new rule or clarify any standard for prosecutorial disqualification but only craft a remedy they'd prefer. I don't think that can be correct. It's rather extraordinary."

It was a 2-1 decision. Judge Ben Land, who was appointed by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, dissented:

Because the law does not support the result reached by the majority, I respectfully dissent. I am particularly troubled by the fact that the majority has taken what has long been a discretionary decision for the trial court to make and converted it to something else entirely. If this Court was the trier of fact and had the discretion to choose a remedy based on our own observations, assessment of the credibility of the witnesses, and weighing of the evidence, then perhaps we would be justified in reaching the result declared by the majority. But we are not trial judges, and we lack that authority. Given the unique role of the trial court and the fact that it is the court which has broad discretion to impose a remedy that fits the situation as it finds it to be, we should resist the temptation to interfere with that discretion, including its chosen remedy, just because we happen to see things differently. Doing otherwise violates well-established precedent, threatens the discretion given to trial courts, and blurs the distinction between our respective courts.

Our role as appellate judges is critically important, but it often requires restraint. We are here to ensure the law has been applied correctly and to correct harmful legal errors when we see them. It is not our job to second-guess trial judges or to substitute our judgment for theirs. We do not find the facts but instead defer to the trial court’s factual findings where there is any evidence to support them.

Land wrote, "We should not lightly interfere with their work [the decision-making of trial judges] or weaken their discretion by imposing our will because we don’t like the result."

"Because I am convinced that is what the majority has done in this case, I respectfully dissent," Land reiterated.

Oral arguments were abruptly canceled in early December without explanation.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.