The Georgia Court of Appeals decided Thursday to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office from the sweeping election subversion case she brought last year against President-elect Donald Trump.
A three-judge panel ruled 2–1 that a lower court had “erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis” after Trump and several co-defendants uncovered a previously undisclosed relationship Willis had with the case’s lead special prosecutor, Nathan Wade.
“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,” the panel wrote in a 31-page order.
At the lower court level, Judge Scott McAfee had considered Trump and his co-defendants’ request this year that Willis be disqualified and the case be tossed out entirely because of Willis’s romantic relationship with Wade, whom she hired in November 2021. McAfee decided, however, that Wade’s resignation from the case would resolve any conflict of interest concerns.
The appellate judges reversed this decision, saying Willis and her office could no longer oversee the indictment but that the charges could still stand, a move that plunges the already-struggling case deeper into a state of uncertainty.
“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 judges wrote.
Legal experts, including conservative Georgia-based lawyer Phil Holloway, have told the Washington Examiner that Willis’s disqualification would flip the case into the hands of a state government agency, which would then decide whether to move the case to another prosecutor’s office. It is highly likely, Holloway said, that the case could hit a dead end at that stage. Its sprawling nature and many other complications would make it undesirable to other offices, he said.
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance said on X that the appellate court’s decision “most likely [is] a slow death knell if not an outright death for the case.”
Steve Sadow, Trump’s attorney, called the decision “well-reasoned” in a statement and said it “puts an end to a politically motivated persecution of the next President of the United States.”
The near-fatal blow to Willis’s indictment is the latest embarrassing defeat for prosecutors in Trump’s four criminal cases.
Special counsel Jack Smith was forced to terminate Trump’s two federal criminal cases, one for alleged election subversion and one for Trump’s handling of classified material, after Trump won the election.
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Trump’s hush money case in New York was the lone case of the four to have resulted in a guilty verdict against Trump, for falsifying business records. However, the judge there is facing roadblocks to sentencing Trump because he is an incoming president, and Trump’s attorneys are also threatening to challenge every aspect of the case until it is paused indefinitely or dismissed.
Willis, for her part, could also choose to elevate the disqualification matter to the Georgia Supreme Court. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.
