It’s been a brutal week for Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis.
The Georgia Supreme Court ended Willis’s attempt to stay in charge of her criminal case against President Donald Trump and his supporters for allegedly meddling in the election.
The 4-3 decision doesn’t review a lower decision that disqualified Willis because of a “significant appearance of impropriety” caused by her friendship with a top prosecutor on the case.
It means that Trump and his Georgian friends can’t be charged with trying to change the results of the 2020 election, at least while Willis is in office.
The Georgia Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council could choose a new lawyer to take over the case, but that could take months. Until then, the huge racketeering case will remain unresolved.
Willis said she respects the legal system and the courts, even though she didn’t agree with the court’s choice not to look into her appeal.
“I hope that whoever is assigned to handle the case will have the courage to do what the evidence and the law demand,” Willis said, adding that her office will make case materials available to the council.
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in Georgia, in a statement said the state’s high court had “correctly denied review.”
“Willis’ misconduct during the investigation and prosecution of President Trump was egregious, and she deserved nothing less than disqualification. This proper decision should bring an end to the wrongful political, lawfare persecutions of the President,” Sadow said.
Willis charged Trump and more than a dozen of his friends with treason because he said they worked together illegally for months to stop former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in Georgia.
Trump and the other people accused pleaded not guilty.
As Trump ran for a second term in the White House, he was charged with several crimes. In New York, he was found guilty on 34 counts of forging business records.
It became public that Willis was seeing Nathan Wade, a top lawyer on the Georgia case. This changed the course of the case.
Willis was also hit with another setback after being disqualified from prosecuting the case she brought against President Trump.
Willis began prosecuting the case against the president and 18 other defendants on charges that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but was removed from the case after it was discovered that she hired her lover, Nathan Wade, as the lead prosecutor.
Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill, Senate Bill 244, which was passed by the state legislature, that would require the state’s taxpayers to reimburse defendants in cases where the prosecutor has been disqualified.
Steven Sadow, the attorney who has represented Trump in the case, spoke to Forbes and said that the governor signing the legislation “represents a major turning point in holding unethical, opportunistic, and deceitful prosecutors accountable for their misconduct.”
The legislation says that criminal defendants are “entitled to an award of all reasonable attorney’s fees and costs incurred” if the prosecutor who is in charge of the case is disqualified for misconduct, and the defendant has the charges against them dismissed.
The state senator who sponsored the legislation, Sen. Bradley Beach, said that he was motivated by the Trump case, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The appeals court removed Willis from the case against Trump in December.
The court did not go further by throwing out President Trump’s indictment altogether, but Willis and the assistant DAs working in her office now have “no authority to proceed,” according to the ruling.
In March, Willis was ordered to pay over $54,000 in attorney fees for violating Georgia’s Open Records Act, according to court documents.