OAN’s Brooke Mallory
11:52 AM – Thursday, May 9, 2024
On Wednesday, an appeals court in Georgia decided to re-examine a decision made by a lower court that allowed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to carry out her legal prosecution of former President Donald Trump’s “election meddling” case.
Trump “has gotten a favorable ruling that could push any future trials beyond the November election,” AP News reported. The judge in Trump’s Florida lawsuit involving confidential materials had postponed the trial date indefinitely the day before.
Due to Willis’s intimate relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, which clearly seemed like a conflict of interest, Trump and other defendants in Georgia worked to have Willis and her office removed from the case. However, Judge Scott McAfee of the Superior Court ruled in March that there was no conflict of interest that prevented Willis from taking the case.
Nevertheless, the judge did approve Trump and the other defendants’ request to appeal the decision to the Georgia Court of Appeals.
On Wednesday, the intermediate appeals court decided to take on the case.
The former president is looking forward to making arguments to the appeals court about why the case should be dismissed and why Willis “should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution,” according to an email from Trump’s lead attorney, Steve Sadow.
Regardless of whether the petition is granted or the appellate court expedites any subsequent appeal, McAfee stated in his ruling that he will still handle other pretrial motions. However, while the appeal is pending, Trump and others may ask the Court of Appeals to halt the case.
The case was “encumbered by an appearance of impropriety,” according to McAfee’s March order. He stated that Willis could continue working on the case only if Wade resigned, and a few hours later, the special prosecutor handed in his resignation.
Intimate aspects of Willis and Wade’s private lives were revealed in court in mid-February, sparking a turbulent few months in the lawsuit due to claims that Willis had unfairly profited from her relationship with Wade. The romantic lives of the prosecutors completely overshadowed the charges in one of the four criminal cases against the former GOP president.
In August, Trump and eighteen other individuals were indicted on charges of allegedly engaging in an extensive plot to unlawfully reverse his narrow defeat to Democrat candidate Joe Biden in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. The defendants were all accused of breaking Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law.
Even though four individuals pleaded guilty after reaching deals, Trump has still pleaded not guilty.
In their appeal filing, Trump and the other defendants contended that McAfee erred in failing to remove Wade as well as Willis, stating that “providing DA Willis with the option to simply remove Wade confounds logic and is contrary to Georgia law.”
The charges against Willis were initially revealed in a motion that Michael Roman’s former White House assistant and former Trump campaign member, Ashleigh Merchant, filed early in January. The motion maintained that Wade and Willis were having an improper romantic relationship and that Willis was heavily overpaying Wade for his job while she took equal advantage by benefiting from vacations Wade paid for that she would allegedly later reimburse him for.
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