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The question of whether District Attorney Fani Willis should be removed from Fulton County’s election meddling lawsuit against former President Donald Trump will be decided by three judges of the appeals court who were chosen by Republican governors.

The Georgia Court of Appeals officially accepted the case on Monday, and the designations followed. October 4th was the preliminary date set for oral arguments.

A computer generated random selection process was used to assign judges Todd Markle, Trenton Brown, and Benjamin Land to hear what is expected to be the most high-profile appeal in the court’s history.

The judges selected to hear a high-profile appeal were Todd Markle, Trenton Brown, and Benjamin Land.

Judge Brown took Judge Yvette Miller’s place on the panel after she recused herself from the case.

Former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes appointed Yvette Miller, the first black woman to serve on the appeals court. It is unclear why Miller stepped aside, but she is retiring at the end of the year.

As noted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the three judges who will hear the case all served as trial judges before being appointed to the appellate court:

–Markle, who was appointed to the court by Gov. Nathan Deal in 2018, is a former Fulton County Superior Court judge.

–Land, who was appointed to the bench two years ago by Gov. Brian Kemp, is a former Superior Court judge for the six-county Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit in West Georgia.

–Brown, appointed by Deal in 2018, served as a Superior Court judge for the eight-county Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit in central Georgia.

Though most cases heard by the court are settled without oral arguments, the three-judge panel is expected to hear arguments on this appeal.

Ashleigh Merchant, a Marietta attorney, has announced that she will ask the court to hear oral arguments on behalf of Mike Roman, one of Trump’s 14 remaining co-defendants in the racketeering case. Merchant filed in January as the first defense lawyer to move for Willis’ disqualification in the case.

It is anticipated that the panel will not render a ruling before to the fall presidential election.

The Georgia Constitution requires a decision to be made within two terms of court, thus the justices would have to decide by mid-March 2025. Though most cases are decided about eight and a half months after they are first docketed, the judges may agree to expedite the process.

Among the busiest courts in the nation is the appeals court. Though most of the present membership was appointed by serving governors and then reelected, the group’s fifteen members are nonpartisan and elected to six-year terms in staggered elections.

The announcement was made shortly after the appeals court received thousands of pages of background documents from the clerk of the Fulton Superior Court. Copies of the indictment, bond orders for the nine defendants who requested an appeal, earlier court filings, and decisions from Judge Scott McAfee were among the documents.

Transcripts of the evidentiary hearing from February, which featured sworn evidence from Willis and Nathan Wade—the former special prosecutor whose amorous relationship with the DA sparked the defendants’ attempt to have the whole office removed from the case—were also sent by the court.

In March, McAfee rendered a decision permitting Willis to continue working on the case if Wade left the prosecution. Wade wrote his resignation letter on that same day, but the defendants were unsatisfied, claiming Willis still had a conflict of interest that called for her dismissal. They challenged McAfee’s decision, and this month the appeals court decided to hear the case.

The panel won’t be gathering any new evidence. Rather, it will ascertain whether McAfee reached the appropriate legal conclusions.

Trump’s principal Atlanta lawyer, Steve Sadow, expressed his excitement in a statement to address the three judges on the merits of Willis’s dismissal from the case.

The post Georgia Court Sets Oct. 4 Hearing Date in Fani Willis Disqualification Appeal appeared first on Conservative Brief.