A ruling from Georgia’s Court of Appeals removes Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting a sprawling election interference case against Donald Trump and more than a dozen of his allies, upending the ongoing criminal case against the president-elect weeks before he returns to the White House.
A three-judge panel determined Thursday that the district attorney’s former romantic relationship with a special prosecutor who was hired to take on the case amounted to a conflict of interest that warranted her dismissal from the prosecution team.
The case brought by Willis’s office accuses the former president and his co-defendants of leading a “criminal enterprise” to overturn his loss, using a so-called “fake elector” scheme to falsely assert his victory, seizing voting machines, intimidating election workers, and pushing the state’s top election official to “find” votes he would need to win.
Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants — including allies Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman — were charged under the state’s RICO Act, used to target organized crime, and faced a long list of other charges tied to an alleged scheme to subvert the state’s election results.
Four of Trump’s original co-defendants — including attorneys Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell — pleaded guilty to some charges last year after reaching plea deals with prosecutors.
In March, following several days of hearings on allegations that Willis financially benefited from hiring Nathan Wade, with whom she was once romantically involved, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee determined that either Willis or Wade should step aside.
Wade then submitted his resignation.
Trump and his co-defendants appealed, arguing that “nothing in the law — anywhere — says that the remedy for an appearance of impropriety is the disqualification of one apparently conflicted lawyer but not another.”
This is a developing story
