Source: Pool / Getty
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will appeal her disqualification from the election interference case against Donald Trump by the Georgia Court of Appeals.
Hours after the Georgia Court of Appeals announced that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from prosecuting the election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday (December 19), Willis’ office declared its intent “to petition the Supreme Court of Georgia” to appeal the decision in a motion filed with the court. There has been no further comment from Willis or her office.
Willis’ debarment from the highly intricate case came after the three-judge panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals overturned the trial judge’s decision earlier in the day, by a vote of 2-1. Judge Scott McAfee had ruled in March that Wills could remain on the case despite revelations that she had been in a romantic relationship with the lawyer she brought on to handle the prosecution, Nathan Wade. The defense attorneys in the case seized upon that information, forcing Willis to testify about the relationship in January of this year.
The three judges on the Court of Appeals panel are all Republicans. The Georgia Supreme Court is also predominately composed of Republican judges. Appealing the decision comes with a high risk – if the Georgia Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s decision, it would effectively scuttle the case which is the last standing prosecution against Trump. Sentencing in his “hush money” case in New York City has been delayed, and the Department of Justice opted to drop its cases against the president-elect citing the precedent of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Former Georgia prosecutor Chris Timmons said that “it’s a tough call to say whether the Court of Appeals got it right,” in an interview with the New York Times adding that “their reasoning was that the people lost confidence in the case.” But he also noted that Judge McAfee, who is a conservative, saw enough merit in Willis to continue on the case and cited Willis having “won re-election in a landslide, suggesting that Fulton County at least has confidence in her.”