Trump Urges Georgia Supreme Court to Deny Fani Willis’s Bid to Reverse Disqualification

Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump asked the Georgia Supreme Court to uphold the Fulton County DA’s disqualification from a case against Trump.
Trump Urges Georgia Supreme Court to Deny Fani Willis’s Bid to Reverse Disqualification
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testifies during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, Ga., on Feb. 15, 2024. Alyssa Pointer-Pool/Getty Images
Tom Ozimek
Updated:

President-elect Donald Trump’s legal team has asked the Georgia Supreme Court to deny Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s bid to overturn her disqualification from an election interference case against Trump and a number of co-defendants.

In a petition filed on Jan. 17, Trump’s lawyers urged the Georgia Supreme Court to deny Willis’s request for a review of an appellate court’s decision to disqualify her from the case due to an “appearance of impropriety.” Willis had argued that the Georgia Court of Appeals incorrectly disqualified her from the case by overreaching its authority and creating a new standard for disqualifying a prosecutor.

Trump’s attorneys argued in the filing that the appeals court correctly ruled that the appearance of impropriety in Willis’s conduct—related to her romantic relationship with her former special counsel—moved the case “from the middle of the continuum to that portion where disqualification is mandated because it is the only remedy that could purge the taint of impropriety.”

The president-elect’s legal team further contended that Willis’s claim that the disqualification created a new standard that would unjustifiably make it easier to disqualify Georgia prosecutors from future cases is unfounded because of the unprecedented circumstances of Willis’s case.

“This ‘rare’ conduct and ’significant' appearance of impropriety is not likely to recur because no Georgia District Attorney has engaged in this level of unprofessional conduct before, it is highly unlikely that any DA will ever do so in the future, and no Georgia court has ever been faced with such actual impropriety by a Georgia DA,” they wrote.

Trump co-defendant Michael Roman alleged last year that Willis and Special Assistant DA Nathan Wade were romantically involved and using Fulton County funds to partially finance their shared vacations. Willis and Wade confirmed their relationship but denied any financial benefit. A trial court found that there was an “appearance of impropriety” in Willis’s conduct and an “odor of mendacity” surrounding the case, but that there wasn’t enough evidence for disqualification.
Roman and other co-defendants appealed to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which found that disqualification was warranted.

“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” the appellate judges wrote in their opinion.

Willis appealed that decision to the Georgia Supreme Court, seeking to have the disqualification overturned. She argued that there was no actual finding of conflict of interest or “forensic misconduct” to justify disqualification, and that the Georgia Court of Appeals ignored precedent and improperly applied its own discretion in the matter.

“Without precedential authority or any explanation for its reasoning, the majority opinion created a new standard for disqualification unique to prosecutors, thus granting itself the authority of this Court to announce new standards and principles of law,” Willis wrote in her petition for review.

“No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest,” her filing also stated. “And no Georgia court has ever reversed a trial court’s order declining to disqualify a prosecutor based solely on an appearance of impropriety.”

It’s unclear when the Georgia Supreme Court will take a decision on Willis’s request. If it opts to deny review, her disqualification will stand.

The case against Trump and over a dozen co-defendants that Willis presided over involved allegations that they took part in a scheme to illegally overturn the 2020 election. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.

Tom Ozimek
Tom Ozimek
Reporter
Tom Ozimek is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times. He has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education.
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