Fani Willis (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’s case against President-elect Donald Trump is "effectively dead," according to legal experts, after a Georgia appeals court disqualified her from the investigation in a Thursday ruling.
The court disqualified Willis and the rest of the district attorney’s office, citing the "significant appearance of impropriety" because of the Democrat’s romantic relationship with a special prosecutor on the case, Nathan Wade. The court said Willis’s disqualification is "mandated" and that "no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings."
The ruling makes the case an "orphan"—an indictment without a prosecutor—raising questions about what happens next in an investigation that Democrats once considered the final nail in Trump’s political coffin. Willis obtained indictments against Trump and 18 others in August 2023 on charges that they conspired to overthrow the results of the Georgia presidential election. But Trump’s legal team incrementally poked holes in the indictment, convincing judges to throw out some charges, and revealing details about Willis’s relationship with Wade.
The ruling does leave some room for speculation about what happens next. The appeals court did not dismiss the charges, but signaled that a dismissal would be the wisest course of action.
Willis has already asked the Georgia Supreme Court to review the appellate court decision, but that is unlikely to revive the case, according to lawyers who have closely tracked it.
"It is effectively dead. Yes, it’s not a dismissal, but when you take out the prosecutor, it’s an effective death," Tim Parlatore, who represented Trump in the classified documents case, told the Washington Free Beacon.
"It’s possible that the attorney general takes it over, but I think the reality is that it’s still effectively dead because if another attorney takes it over, they’re going to dismiss it," said Parlatore, "because this is a case that should have never been brought, but for Fani Willis’s personal political ambitions."
It’s a major win for Trump as he enters his second presidential term, and another setback for Willis, who was reelected for a second term in November. The Department of Justice dropped its case against Trump over his handling of classified documents. Besides her scandalous relationship with Wade, Willis has faced scrutiny for losing a racketeering case against Young Thug, and for firing a whistleblower who accused Willis of misusing federal grants.
Phil Holloway, a former assistant district attorney in Georgia, agrees that Willis’s case is "dead" following the appeals court decision. He predicted the Georgia Supreme Court "is not going to take [her] case" if she appeals it.
"They don’t have to do it, and they won’t," said Holloway. That would put the case into the hands of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council on Georgia, a bipartisan group of six district attorneys and three court solicitor generals that would be tasked with selecting a prosecutor from a pool of district attorneys and private lawyers with the interest and resources in handling it.
Holloway said the council is "not going to be able to find another DA … that wants to take this monstrosity." Any prosecutor who did volunteer to take the case would have to "redo everything that [Willis] did and try to fix the problems that she created," said Holloway.
Indeed, the head of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council on Georgia conceded Thursday that finding a replacement for Willis "won’t be an easy lift."
"Once I get it, I start the process of trying to find a conflict lawyer, and I look for somebody who has the resources and would be interested and actually willing to take on the case," council director Peter Skandalakis told CNN.
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