Fani Willis disqualified from prosecuting Trump in Georgia election case | Donald Trump

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been disqualified from prosecuting Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in light of her relationship with her top deputy in the case, the Georgia State Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

The 2-1 decision to remove Willis — and overturn a ruling by the president’s judge that allowed her to remain on the case as long as the deputy, Nathan Wade, resigned — likely signals the death knell for the final criminal case still active against Trump .

The appeals court stopped short of dismissing the charges against the president-elect, but with the disqualification of Willis also extended to other prosecutors in her office and Trump’s return to the White House in January, the case is unlikely to continue in its current form.

“After carefully considering the court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred in not disqualifying DA Willis and her office,” Judge Trenton Brown wrote in the 31-page statement.

“The remedy designed by the trial to prevent a continuing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address apparent impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis exercised his broad pre-trial discretion as to whom to prosecute and on what charges had to travel.

“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety is generally not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare instance where disqualification is warranted and no other remedy will be sufficient to restore public confidence in the integrity of these procedures.”

Trump, along with more than a dozen associates, was indicted last year on racketeering charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. As part of their effort to dismiss the case, Trump and his co-defendants argued that Willis’ circumstances meant she should be disqualified from the case.

The initial effort to disqualify Willis failed after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, after days of contentious evidentiary hearings, ruled that Trump and his co-defendants failed to prove an actual conflict of interest.

McAfee nevertheless felt that her relationship with Wade seemed like a conflict that needed to be resolved. In order for Willis to continue prosecuting the case, he ordered, Wade had to resign from the district attorney’s office. Wade resigned later that evening.

Willis strongly denied wrongdoing when she testified at the evidentiary hearings last February, rejecting accusations that her relationship with Wade influenced the charges and scope of the case and insisting there was no conflict of interest.

The district attorney testified that her relationship with Wade began months after she hired him to work on the case as a special prosecutor and ended in the summer of 2023, around the time an Atlanta grand jury returned the indictment against Trump on waste.

Willis also sought to play down allegations that she participated in some sort of kickback scheme through Wade’s employment, benefiting from his earnings, as alleged by defense attorneys for a Trump co-defendant, Michael Roman. She testified that she reimbursed all expenses he had incurred.

The allegations first surfaced last January in a motion filed by Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, who complained of a potential conflict of interest arising from what she described as “self-dealing” between Willis and Wade as a result of their then-unconfirmed romantic relationship.

Roman’s filing essentially accused Willis of participating in a quasi-kickback scheme in which Wade paid for joint vacations to Florida and California using earnings of more than $650,000 from work on the Trump case. The filing also claimed the relationship had started before he was hired.