In a case she filed in connection with attempts to void the 2020 election, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified by a Georgia appeal court on Thursday and was not allowed to continue prosecuting Donald Trump and co-defendants.
The ruling is probably going to ruin the case and stop the prosecution of Trump and his supporters for trying to reverse his defeat. Following Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, federal prosecutors have already abandoned the other criminal case pertaining to the 2020 election.
“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” the court stated, alluding to a previous decision that permitted Willis to continue representing the case. Willis’s friendship with Nathan Wade, the case’s special prosecutor, had drawn criticism.
Judge Scott McAffee of the Fulton County Superior Court had previously ruled that Willis may continue working on the matter as long as Wade stayed away from it, but the court claimed that this decision did not stop the “appearance of impropriety.”
“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,” the judge stated. “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.”
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