Georgia Appeals Court Pauses Case for Trump Co-Defendant

The Nathan Deal Judicial Center, home of Georgia's Supreme Court and Court of Appeals in Atlanta on May, 1, 2024. (Kate Brumback/AP Photo)

The Georgia Court of Appeals has suspended a case against a co-defendant in the case against former President Donald Trump and more than a dozen others, handing a small setback to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as she fights against her disqualification.

The state appeals court on Wednesday granted the request of Coffee County elections director Misty Hampton, the Trump co-defendant, to have her case paused pending the outcome of an appeal to disqualify Ms. Willis from the case amid allegations that the district attorney had a conflict of interest.

Ms. Hampton was charged with conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit computer-related crimes, and for violating Georgia’s racketeering act. She pleaded not guilty.

Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote that he would move ahead with some pre-trial motions for several defendants, including Ms. Hampton, who weren’t involved in the Willis disqualification attempt. That prompted her request for the Court of Appeals to step in.

Earlier in the month, the appeals court paused the case for former President Trump and several others as they appealed Judge McAfee’s ruling in March that allowed Ms. Willis to remain on the case. The former president earlier this week fired the opening salvo in his appeal of the judge’s decision.

Trump Files Opening Brief

In a submission to the Georgia Court of Appeals on June 24, the former president’s attorneys, led by Steve Sadow, said that Ms. Willis “decimated the integrity of these proceedings” in the election case against former President Trump. “The circumstances that require her disqualification are entirely self-inflicted wounds that were within her power to avoid,” it said.

The brief then made reference to allegations about a relationship that Ms. Willis confirmed to have had with her former special counsel in the case, Nathan Wade. A Fulton County judge in March had ruled that Ms. Willis could remain on the case but Mr. Wade had to leave, while adding that an “odor of mendacity” remained.

Former President Trump’s attorneys and lawyers for his co-defendants have been angling to have Ms. Willis removed since January when co-defendant Michael Roman submitted the initial allegations that the relationship created a conflict of interest.

Both Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade, in court testimony, denied allegations that they had financially benefitted from the arrangement and disputed the defense attorney’s claims about their relationship’s timeline that suggested they were involved earlier than they had claimed.

As of June 27, the Fulton County District Attorney’s office has not filed a response brief. In April, however, her office argued against the former president’s submission to the Georgia Court of Appeals that the former president’s efforts were meritless.

“There being no error by the trial court, the present application merely reflects the applicants’ dissatisfaction with the trial court’s proper application of well-established law to the facts,” her filing said. “Because the applicants have wholly failed to carry their burden of persuasion, this Court should decline interlocutory review.”

As for Mr. Wade, the former Fulton County special prosecutor said in interviews with ABC News and CNN that he believes his relationship with Ms. Willis wasn’t unethical and asserted that the motion to disqualify is a distraction. He also said that their relationship had no bearing on the case itself.

“I believe that the public has, through the testimony and other interviews, a clear snapshot that this is clearly just a distraction,” he said during a mid-June interview with CNN. “It is not a relevant issue in this case. And I think that we should be focusing more on the facts and the indictment of the case.”

The Epoch Times contacted Ms. Willis’s office for comment on Thursday.