Donald Trump’s Georgia attorneys file new motion to disqualify Fani Willis
Fulton County DA remaining on the case after special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s removal.
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - In the almost-immediate aftermath of last week’s historic Fulton County court ruling, former President Donald Trump’s Georgia attorneys filed a motion late Monday afternoon seeking to again disqualify Fulton County DA Fani Willis.
“President Trump and seven defendants have jointly filed a motion requesting the court to grant a certificate of immediate review of its order denying dismissal of the case and disqualification of Fulton County DA Willis,” according to a statement from Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead Georgia attorney.
“The motion notes that the court found that Willis’ actions created an appearance of impropriety and an ‘odor of mendacity’ that lingers in this case, but it nonetheless refused to dismiss the case or disqualify her,” Sadow said. “The motion further notes that the court found Georgia case law lacks controlling precedent for the standard for disqualification of a prosecuting attorney for forensic misconduct. For these reasons among others, the court’s order is ripe for pretrial appellate review.”
An appeal isn’t guaranteed, but is instead at the discretion of the court and presiding Judge Scott McAfee.
“Two things are going to have to happen,” said Georgia State University law professor Anthony Kreis. “One is the defendants are going to have to ask Judge McAfee for permission to appeal before the trial. He has the discretion to say no or to agree with it. And then if he agree to it, the Court of Appeals has the ability to either hear the case or also say no.”
The dispute over Willis and Wade’s relationship set the case back weeks, if not longer. Now, it will be a race against the campaign clock for Willis and her team to get the trial over with by the 2024 election in November.
“I think this has certainly been a huge distraction for the DA and her case,” said Kreis. “I think it’s really unlikely that this happens before the election.”
On Friday morning, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued one of the nation’s most anticipated judicial decisions in recent memory, ruling Willis must remove special prosecutor Nathan Wade from the Trump racketeering indictment if Willis were to remain on the case.
Hours after his ruling, Wade resigned from the case, meaning Willis will continue prosecuting the case. Willis accepted Wade’s resignation, effective immediately.
>> READ JUDGE MCAFEE’S FULL RULING
McAfee’s ruling led to an exchange of correspondences late Friday between Willis - the locally elected district attorney who has issued dozens of indictments that accuse the nation’s 45th president and his allies of trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results - and Wade, with whom she has had an admitted romantic relationship.
>> READ WADE’S RESIGNATION LETTER, WILLIS RESPONSE
McAfee wrote an “odor of mendacity,” or untruthfulness, remains around the case. He also criticized Willis’ controversial January speech at Atlanta’s largest African-American church after allegations surfaced in early January that she’d had an affair with her special prosecutor.
While Willis didn’t confirm or deny the accusations or mentioned Wade, her comments did suggest a racial overtone to the charges.
That speech was a crucial part of Trump and his attorneys’ efforts to disqualify both Willis and Wade from their investigation and subsequent indictment of Trump and his fellow GOP co-defendants.
“The Court cannot find that this speech crossed the line to the point where the Defendants have been denied the opportunity for a fundamentally fair trial, or that it requires the District Attorney’s disqualification,” McAfee wrote Friday. “But it was still legally improper. Providing this type of public comment creates dangerous waters for the District Attorney to wade further into.
“The time may well have arrived for an order preventing the State from mentioning the case in any public forum to prevent prejudicial pretrial,” McAfee wrote.
McAfee’s ruling did not include an automatic certificate of review, Atlanta attorney Josh Schiffer said, meaning the lawyers have 10 days to apply for an expedited appeal. Schiffer doesn’t believe the state will file an appeal, but any of the defendants who originally joined the motion to disqualify Willis from the case could.
Since early January, Willis has been facing allegations she misused taxpayer funds and crossed ethical boundaries during her romantic relationship with Wade, an issue McAfee addressed in his March 15, 2024, ruling.
On March 1, McAfee heard three hours worth of closing arguments from attorneys representing Willis and some of Trump’s co-defendants, and said he hoped to make a decision on the case “over the next two weeks.” That two-week window expired Friday.
Last Wednesday, McAfee also ruled six of the charges in the Trump’s indictment must be quashed, including three against Trump. But the order leaves intact many other charges in the indictment and McAfee wrote prosecutors could seek a new indictment on the charges he dismissed.
The six charges dismissed were related to soliciting elected officials to violate their oaths of office. That includes two charges related to the phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021.
The questioning started in early January, when a court filing by Michael Roman, one of Trump’s co-defendants, and Ashleigh Merchant, his attorney, accused Willis and special prosecutor Wade of having a romantic relationship.
Roman is a former White House aide who served as the director of Trump’s election day operations. Prosecutors allege Roman was involved in efforts to put forth a set of fake electors after the 2020 election, a charge to which Roman has pleaded not guilty.
Roman’s court filing claims Willis and Wade took lavish vacations together and that Wade used part of his salary from the district attorney’s office to travel with Willis. Merchant also claims to have discovered “outside of court filings” that Willis and Wade went on trips together.
Trump and 18 of his GOP allies were indicted by Willis and her office in August 2023 on charges they engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. That election saw Democrat Joe Biden become the first Democrat to carry a deep Southern state in a presidential election since Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992.
Two weeks ago, Merchant also became the the first person to be subpoenaed before a newly formed special Georgia senate committee empaneled to investigate Willis.
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