Fulton County DA Fani Willis Appeals Disqualification From Trump Election

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The Georgia prosecutor appealed the disqualification to the state’s Supreme Court.

The Georgia prosecutor who brought a case against President-elect Donald Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants appealed a court ruling that disqualified her amid allegations of impropriety.

The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled late last year that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office couldn’t prosecute Trump and the others due to the “appearance of impropriety” that was created when she engaged in a relationship with her former special counsel, Nathan Wade, who she hired to help with the case.

Willis, an elected Democrat, asked the state Supreme Court to reverse that lower court’s decision late Wednesday, arguing it “overreached the Court of Appeals’ authority” and created a new standard for disqualifying a prosecutor.

“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 said. “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 further asks the state’s highest court to determine whether the court of appeals was incorrect in removing her based “solely upon an appearance of impropriety and absent a finding of an actual conflict of interest or forensic misconduct” and whether it mistakenly replaced “the trial court’s discretion with its own.”

In March 2024, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis could remain on the case if Wade stepped down, which he did. However, the judge noted that allegations against both Willis and Wade left an “odor of mendacity” over the proceedings against Trump and his co-defendants, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Months before, a Trump co-defendant had claimed in court documents that Willis and Wade were engaged in a romantic relationship, which the two later confirmed in court during a contentious hearing. Both denied that they financially benefitted from the arrangement and also denied claims that their relationship started before Wade was hired as special counsel by Willis’s office.

Trump and several co-defendants appealed McAfee’s ruling, which effectively placed Willis’s case on hold. Even if Willis wins her appeal, it would be unlikely that she will be able to prosecute Trump in the near future as he is due to be inaugurated again as president on Jan. 20. However, his 14 other co-defendants could still face further prosecution.

A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023 under the state’s broad anti-racketeering law, accusing them of partaking in a scheme to illegally overturn the election. Trump and 14 others have pleaded not guilty, while several entered guilty pleas in exchange for a lighter sentence.

The case brought by Fulton County is one of four Trump had faced, but only one of them went to trial and resulted in a conviction. That case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, resulted in a jury returning a guilty verdict against Trump for falsification of business records. Trump pleaded not guilty in the case. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.

The Fulton County case resulted in Trump’s mugshot being taken, which he sometimes used as part of his 2024 presidential campaign. In August 2023, he uploaded the mugshot on his X social media account and decried the case as “election interference.”

Two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith’s office accused Trump of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election results and for illegally retaining classified documents after leaving the White House, to which the president-elect had pleaded not guilty. Smith dropped those two cases in December 2024 following Trump’s November 2024 election win.

After Willis was disqualified last month, Trump declared in a Fox News interview that her case against him was “entirely dead” and that the other defendants should “receive an apology” from her office.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.