The Court of Appeals for the State of Georgia agreed on Wednesday to consider former President Donald Trump‘s appeal of a judge’s decision not to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting his sweeping racketeering case.
The appeals court had until May 13 to decide whether to take up the appeal of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee‘s March 15 decision to keep Willis on the case. McAfee’s decision came with the caveat that Willis’s ex-lover and special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, had to step aside due to the “odor of mendacity” the judge said their romantic relationship left on the prosecution.
“President Trump looks forward to presenting interlocutory arguments to the Georgia Court of Appeals as to why the case should be dismissed and Fulton County DA Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution,” Trump attorney Steve Sadow told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
Trump is charged alongside 13 others over an alleged conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election results in the Peach State. The former president has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The defendants would like to see the appeals court find that Willis’s relationship amounted to a conflict of interest and have her completely removed from the case. It is not clear when the appeals court will weigh arguments in the dispute, according to a copy of the order.
In March, McAfee determined that pretrial work in his court would not be automatically stalled if the appeals court agreed to consider his decision to keep Willis on the case. But Trump and his co-defendants could seek a stay from the appeals court, which would pause the case during the appeal.
Efforts to disqualify Willis were first spurred by Mike Roman, a Republican operative who is one of Trump’s allies charged in the sweeping racketeering indictment. Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, first revealed allegations of a previous long-term relationship between Willis and Wade in a Jan. 8 complaint filed to McAfee.
The ensuing months marred the prosecution with extensive hearings that dredged much of Willis’s and Wade’s personal lives into the case. Throughout weeks of hearings, the point of contention became not the relationship itself but whether Willis benefited from appointing Wade to a lucrative special prosecutor position.
Willis claimed she split vacation expenses roughly evenly by reimbursing Wade with cash when the pair went on trips together throughout the course of his employment by the county. However, because she and Wade lacked evidence to verify or contradict that claim, McAfee said the defense had not met its burden to disprove her testimony.
McAfee noted at one point that there were “reasonable questions” about Willis’s and Wade’s truthfulness when they testified about their romantic relationship under penalty of perjury.
The appeals court decision comes just days after Wade made his first public appearance since his resignation as special prosecutor in an ABC interview.
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“Workplace romances are as American as apple pie,” Wade said in that recent interview in an effort to downplay their office relationship. “It happens to everyone. But it happened to the two of us.”
An agreement to consider the appeal from Trump and his co-defendants also comes as the former president continues to sit in the courtroom for the trial he faces in Manhattan, the only one of four against him that has made it to a trial.
