Judge Sets Hearing for Trump’s Bid to Disqualify Georgia DA Fani Willis From 2020 Election Probe

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis poses for a portrait in Atlanta on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Brynn Anderson/AP Photo

A judge at Georgia’s Fulton County Superior Court has scheduled a hearing on a request by former President Donald Trump’s attorneys to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting a case in which Mr. Trump is accused of interfering in the 2020 presidential election.

Senior Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster issued an order on July 28 that sets the hearing for Aug. 10.

Mr. Schuster is a former Cobb County judge who was assigned the case after all of Fulton County’s judges were recused from the case in an earlier decision (pdf) as the motion filed by Mr. Trump’s attorneys names Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney as a defendant, in addition to Ms. Willis.

The case is 2023CV382670, Donald J. Trump v. Fani Willis, Robert McBurney.

Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers remarks an event in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 8, 2023. Mario Tama/Getty Images

More Details

Mr. Trump’s legal team initially filed the complaint at the Georgia Supreme Court, which on July 13 unanimously declined to hear it.

The former president’s legal team then filed a similar complaint (pdf) at the Fulton County Superior Court on July 20. In it, Mr. Trump’s attorneys said that Ms. Willis should be disqualified from the recently initiated grand-jury proceedings in the case against him due to “actual and perceived conflict of interest.”

The request to disqualify Ms. Willis was based in part on extrajudicial social media posts that “expose that she is fundraising for her reelection campaign on the back of this case” against the former president, Mr. Trump’s attorneys argued.

“The FCDA [Fulton County District Attorney] and the entirety of the FCDA’s Office must be disqualified from any further investigation or potential prosecution of this matter,” the complaint states.

Mr. Trump’s filing also seeks to prevent the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office from using any evidence obtained by the special purpose grand jury (SPGJ) involved in the months-long investigation into alleged election interference and to quash its final report.

Ms. Willis is investigating whether Mr. Trump tried to illegally overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote.

The probe is focusing on a phone call Mr. Trump made to Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to find enough votes to declare him the winner in that state.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” then-President Trump said to Mr. Raffensperger.

Mr. Trump, who has described the phone call with Mr. Raffensperger as “perfect,” has called the investigation a “strictly political witch hunt.”

Ms. Willis said in an earlier interview with The Washington Post that individuals involved in alleged efforts to overturn the election could face jail time.

“The allegations are very serious. If indicted and convicted, people are facing prison sentences,” Ms. Willis said.

Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis in her office on Jan. 4, 2022. Ben Gray/AP Photo

Other Trump Cases

The former president, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is involved in a number of legal disputes.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is investigating Mr. Trump’s role in actions surrounding his challenges to the 2020 presidential election that culminated in a breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump said his attorneys met with U.S. Justice Department officials on July 27, in a sign charges could come soon.

Special counsel Jack Smith has accused Mr. Trump of unlawfully keeping classified national security documents when he left office in 2021 and of lying to officials who tried to recover them.

Mr. Trump on June 13 pleaded not guilty to those charges, which include alleged violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalizes unauthorized possession of defense information.

A New York grand jury has indicted Mr. Trump for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with a payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.

Also in New York, Mr. Trump faces a civil lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney general Letitia James, alleging fraud.

Mr. Trump recently took to his social media platform to denounce the various investigations focusing on him.

“I’m illegally being targeted by them,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “If I wasn’t leading by so much or if I wasn’t running, if I was just sort of taking it easy, none of this would happen.”

An average of the latest polls shows Mr. Trump far ahead of his nearest rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. As of July 27, Mr. Trump was leading Mr. DeSantis, 52.4 percent to 15.5 percent.

In a series of video messages posted on his social media platform, Mr. Trump labeled the various investigations targeting him as an effort to undermine his candidacy.

“These are crooked, corrupt people. It’s called election interference and we can’t let this take down our country because our country is going to hell and we have to turn it around,” Mr. Trump said.