Appeals Court Disqualifies Fani Willis From Prosecuting Georgia Trump Case
“The panel overruled the trial judge, who had allowed Fani T. Willis to keep the case despite a romantic relationship that defendants said created a conflict of interest.
Georgia’s Court of Appeals on Thursday disqualified the Atlanta prosecutor who brought an election interference case against President-elect Donald J. Trump and his allies, a surprise move that threw the entire case into disarray.
In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel reversed the decision of the trial judge, who in March allowed Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., to keep the case, despite revelations about a romantic relationship she had with the lawyer whom she hired to manage the prosecution.
All three of the appeals judges were appointed by Republicans. Ms. Willis’s office swiftly filed court papers indicating that it would appeal the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court, which is also dominated by Republican-appointed judges.
If the lower court’s decision stands, it could doom the case, which is the last active criminal prosecution involving charges against Mr. Trump. The Department of Justice recently moved to dismiss two criminal cases against the president-elect since it has a policy against prosecuting sitting presidents, and sentencing has been delayed in another.
In the Georgia case, Mr. Trump and 14 of his allies are charged with conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Judge Scott McAfee, the trial court judge, had rejected a defense claim that Ms. Willis’s relationship with the lawyer she hired had given her a financial stake in the case. But he found that the relationship had raised “a significant appearance of impropriety” that needed to be addressed, and he effectively forced Ms. Willis to dismiss the lawyer, Nathan J. Wade.
The appeals panel’s majority decision, written by Judge Trenton Brown, said that Judge McAfee’s decision “did not cure the already existing appearance of impropriety.”
The ruling came as a surprise, in part because Judge McAfee has a conservative record and was originally appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. In a dissent, Judge Benjamin A. Land of the Court of Appeals, another Kemp appointee, wrote that he was “particularly troubled by the fact that the majority has taken what has long been a discretionary decision for the trial court to make and converted it to something else entirely.”
“If this Court was the trier of fact and had the discretion to choose a remedy based on our own observations, assessment of the credibility of the witnesses, and weighing of the evidence,” Judge Land continued, “then perhaps we would be justified in reaching the result declared by the majority.” He added: “But we are not trial judges, and we lack that authority.”
The Trump camp celebrated the win. In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said: “In granting President Trump an overwhelming mandate, the American people have demanded an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all the witch hunts against him.”
Steve Sadow, Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer in the Georgia case, said “as the court rightfully noted, only the remedy of disqualification will suffice to restore public confidence.”
“This decision puts an end to a politically motivated persecution of the next president of the United States,” he added.
Ms. Willis’s office did not comment beyond its appeal.
Ms. Willis, an elected Democrat, began her investigation of Mr. Trump and his allies nearly four years ago, but her case could be effectively dead if her office is not able to preserve its hold on the case. When a case is stripped from Georgia prosecutors, its fate is decided by a Republican-controlled state panel.
That panel already decided not to bring charges against Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, who acted as a fake elector for Mr. Trump in 2020. Ms. Willis and her office were barred from bringing charges against Mr. Jones as part of the Trump election interference case, because she had headlined a fund-raiser for one of his political rivals.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, called the ruling “exceptionally bad” in a series of posts on X and said that the appellate judges were encroaching on the trial court’s job.
Chris Timmons, a former Georgia prosecutor who has followed the case closely, said that “it’s a tough call to say whether the Court of Appeals got it right,” adding that “their reasoning was that the people lost confidence in the case.”
But he noted that Ms. Willis recently “won re-election in a landslide, suggesting that Fulton County at least has confidence in her.”
The prosecution was upended in January after a lawyer for one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants revealed in a court filing that Ms. Willis had engaged in a romantic relationship with Mr. Wade. Defense attorneys accused Ms. Willis of “self-dealing” because she took a number of vacations with Mr. Wade after hiring him, while using public funds to pay him more than $650,000 for his work on the case.
“Although reasonable minds could differ, I think that it’s very reasonable for the Court of Appeals to feel that public confidence in the district attorney’s office has been irreparably damaged in relation to this case,” said Clark D. Cunningham, an expert in legal ethics and a law professor at Georgia State University.
While not all of the 15 defendants took part in the appeal, Mr. Cunningham said that he expected all of the remaining defendants to now join it and that their chances of success were good.
Mr. Trump’s legal outlook has improved considerably since the November election. While Mr. Trump was convicted earlier this year of 34 felonies in a Manhattan case related to falsifying business records, the judge recently put off the sentencing, and prosecutors have signaled a willingness to freeze the case while Mr. Trump holds office.
Besides Georgia, four other states are pursuing criminal cases related to efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to cling to power after his 2020 election loss. But Georgia is the only state to have brought charges against Mr. Trump himself.“
No comments:
Post a Comment