Fani Willis asks appeals court not to consider Trump disqualification bid

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) asked a Georgia appeals court Monday not to reconsider a trial judge’s ruling allowing her to continue overseeing the election interference case against former President Trump and several allies.

Judge Scott McAfee ruled last month that Willis’s previous romance with ex-special prosecutor Nathan Wade created an appearance of conflict. However, he allowed Willis to remain on the case after Wade resigned.

“Because the applicants have wholly failed to carry their burden of persuasion, this Court should decline interlocutory review,” Willis’s office told the Georgia Court of Appeals.  

Willis charged Trump and more than a dozen allies with attempting to subvert Georgia’s 2020 election results last summer. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

But the case took a weeks-long detour after Trump co-defendant Michael Roman surfaced evidence of a romance between Willis and Wade, who was leading the prosecution of the former president.

During a fiery hearing on the matter, Willis and Wade both took the witness stand to defend their reputations, confirming their romance but insisting it began after Wade was hired to the case — not before, as defense attorneys contended.

Two defense witnesses said the pair began seeing each other romantically after a 2019 judicial conference they both attended, but the prosecutors said their relationship at that time was only a mentor-like friendship.

McAfee found evidence of an apparent conflict of interest after the blockbuster hearings, but he did not find an actual conflict of interest.

“There is simply no trial court error to be found in the decision to deny disqualification,” Willis’s office wrote Monday. “Days of evidence and testimony failed to disclose anything like a calculated pre-trial plan designed to prejudice the defendants or secure their convictions. The applicants have not identified any public statement injecting the District Attorney’s personal belief as to the defendants’ guilt or appealing to the public weighing of evidence.”

However, Trump and his co-defendants assert the romance — and other actions by Willis — amount to more. After McAfee greenlighted their appeal, the defendants filed an application with the state appeals court urging it to take up the case.

Trump attorney Steve Sadow has specifically pointed to a church speech Willis gave suggesting that the criticism Wade faced stemmed from being the only Black special prosecutor she hired — a contention Sadow has portrayed as an attempt to “foment racial animus” against Trump and his co-defendants to take focus off of Willis’s romance.

“While the trial court factually found DA Willis’s out-of-court statements were improper and Defendants proved an apparent conflict of interest, the trial court erred as a matter of law by not requiring dismissal and DA Willis’ disqualification,” Trump and his co-defendants’ March application to the Georgia appeals court reads. “This legal error requires the Court’s immediate review.”

If the appeals court takes up the defense’s application, it could cause further delays in the historic prosecution alleging Trump and his allies joined a criminal enterprise bent on keeping him in power after he lost the state’s 2020 presidential contest.

Trump has sought to delay all his criminal cases until after Election Day, when he is expected to face off again with President Biden for the White House.