Thursday, the Georgia Court of Appeals took Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis out of the election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump and 18 others because of a relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade that had not been made public. The appeals court agreed with the trial court that the relationship made it look like something was wrong. However, it decided that Willis had to be taken out of the case completely to “restore public confidence.”
Wilkins hired Wade to lead the case against Trump in November 2021. Michael Roman, a co-defendant of Trump who used to work as a White House aide, found out that Willis and Wade had dated before January 2024 and said it caused a conflict of interest in the case. The next month, Willis and Wade admitted that they were dating, though they said it started after Wade was hired.
The defense says that Wade paid for Willis’s costs while they were on trips together from October 2022 to May 2023. The amounts were between $12,000 and $15,000. Willis, on the other hand, said in court that she reimbursed Wade in cash or for similar costs. The trial court found that the costs did not have any effect on the Trump case.
In the past, trial court Judge Scott McAfee refused to remove Willis from the case because, despite a “significant appearance of impropriety,” there wasn’t enough proof of a conflict of interest. As a result, Judge McAfee gave the District Attorney’s office the choice of stepping away and sending the case to someone else, or Wade could withdraw.
The appeals court didn’t look at a conflict of interest, but here’s why it did:
The trial court’s solution to stop an ongoing appearance of wrongdoing didn’t do anything about the appearance of wrongdoing that happened when DA Willis used her wide pre-trial discretion to choose who to pursue and what charges to bring. Even though we know that a mere appearance of wrongdoing isn’t usually enough to disqualify someone, this is one of those rare occasions when it is required, and no other solution will restore the public’s faith in the fairness of these processes.
But in his dissent, appeals court Judge Benjamin A. Land made it clear that the court doesn’t have the power to fire a lawyer when there isn’t a conflict of interest:
We cannot overturn the trial court’s decision not to disqualify a prosecutor when there is no real conflict of interest and the court rejects the claims of actual wrongdoing based on the evidence given. This is what happened here. Not at all. Even when it looks like something is wrong. The concept of stare decisis and the binding precedent require us to be careful and do not let us choose a different solution than the one the trial court did just because we have a different opinion…
A plan to change the results of the 2020 US presidential election in Georgia is said to have involved Trump and his co-defendants. They are all being charged with election interference. There were two cases against Trump that were dropped by federal special prosecutor Jack Smith last month after the former president won this year’s election.