IN ATLANTA — The Georgia election-interference case against former President Donald Trump and others has been put on hold while an appeals court looks over the lower court judge’s decision to let Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis stay on the case.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee can’t move forward with pretrial motions as he had planned because of the order from the Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday. This is because the appeal is still being processed. It wasn’t likely that the case would go to trial before the November election, when Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee for president. This makes that even less likely.
A Fulton County grand jury in August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four of the defendants have pleaded guilty.
On Monday, the appeals court put Trump’s and eight other people’s appeals on a list and said that “if oral argument is requested and granted,” it would likely happen on October 4. The court will have until the middle of March to make a decision. If the losing side is unhappy with the decision, they can take it to the Georgia Supreme Court.
A representative for Willis wouldn’t say anything about the appeals court’s decision.
In August, a grand jury in Fulton County charged Trump and 18 other people with being part of a large-scale plot to illegally try to change the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. After making deals with prosecutors, four of the defendants have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others, however, have pleaded not guilty. It’s one of four cases against Trump for crimes.
Trump and eight other defendants tried to get Willis and her office taken off the case because she was dating special prosecutor Nathan Wade, they said, which created a conflict of interest. In March, McAfee decided that Willis did not have a conflict of interest that should have kept him off the case. However, he did allow Trump and the other defendants to ask the state Court of Appeals to review their case.
McAfee wrote that there is still “an odour of dishonesty.” He said that there were “reasonable doubts” about whether Willis and Wade had been honest about when they started dating, which “further supports the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.” He told Willis that he could only stay on the case if Wade quit. Hours later, the special prosecutor turned in his resignation.
The claims that Willis had unfairly benefited from her relationship with Wade caused a rough couple of months for the case. In mid-February, private details of Willis and Wade’s relationships were shared in court.
“The case should be dismissed and Fulton County DA Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer in Georgia, said. “The Court of Appeals was right to stop proceedings while it hears the appeal.”
