by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News December 19, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday’s ruling by an appellate court which disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and removed her from prosecuting Trump should mark the end of the lawfare campaign against him and his co-defendants in Georgia.

President-elect Donald Trump said the Georgia case against him is essentially over after an appeals court disqualified DA Fani Willis.

“The case has to be thrown out because it was started corruptly by an incompetent prosecutor who received millions of dollars through her boyfriend — who received it from her — and then they went on cruises all the time,” Trump told Fox News Digital.

“Therefore, the case is entirely dead,” Trump added. “Everybody should receive an apology, including those wonderful patriots who have been caught up in this for years.”

A three-judge panel described Willis’s relationship with ex-special prosecutor Nathan Wade as a “significant appearance of impropriety” in ruling that she be removed from the case.

“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” the Court of Appeals of Georgia wrote in its opinion, stating that “the remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.”

Willis last year charged Trump and 18 others, including his former advisers Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, with participating in a criminal enterprise to subvert Joe Biden’s reported 2020 election victory. They all pleaded not guilty, but four co-defendants later reached plea deals with Willis’s office, including former Trump legal advisers Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement: “In granting President Trump an overwhelming mandate, the American People have demanded an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all the Witch Hunts against him. We look forward to uniting our country as President Trump Makes America Great Again.”

Willis’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The appeals court did not completely dismiss the case, and Georgia law allows for the case to be assigned to a different county prosecutor. But legal experts have said that is not likely given the political and unprecedented nature of the case brought by Willis.

Trump and eight co-defendants appealed a March 15 order by Judge Scott McAfee of the Fulton County Superior Court that kept Willis on the case. McAfee found that while Willis’s romantic relationship with Wad did not create a disqualifying conflict of interest, the “odor of mendacity” the relationship caused amounted to an appearance conflict that required either her or Wade to resign. Wade would go on to resign.

The push to disqualify Willis began in a filing in January 2024 by Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for co-defendant Mike Roman, revealing the relationship between Willis and Wade.

“We regret that Ms. Willis did not do the right thing and voluntarily recuse herself,” Merchant said Thursday. “This failure of judgment is the exact reason Mr. Roman was forced to move to disqualify her in the first place, so we are thankful that the court agreed she should not be allowed to prosecute this case any further.”

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  Trump: Georgia case ‘entirely dead’ after appeals court disqualifies Fani Willis, WorldTribune.com