KATE BRUMBACK and SUDHIN THANAWALA
ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Donald Trump and other defendants in Georgia’s election interference case filed court papers Monday seeking to appeal a judge’s ruling not to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from their prosecution or dismiss the charges.
The special prosecutor resigned to address the appearance of impropriety found by the judge, according to a court filing by attorneys for Trump, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and five other defendants.
The attorneys emphasized the importance of allowing the appellate courts to consider whether District Attorney Willis and her office can continue representing the State of Georgia in prosecuting the Defendants in this action before the trial.
The filing requests Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to grant a certificate for the Georgia Court of Appeals to review his decision. A spokesman for Willis said the district attorney’s office couldn’t comment.
McAfee ruled Friday that special prosecutor Nathan Wade had to leave the case or Willis couldn’t continue to pursue the charges. Wade later resigned, allowing Willis to remain on the most sprawling of four criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election.
McAfee did not find that Willis’ relationship with Wade amounted to a conflict of interest but said the allegations created an “appearance of impropriety” that infected the prosecution team.
Attorneys for Trump and the other defendants who joined Monday’s filing said a failure to remove Willis now could imperil any convictions and force a retrial if an appeals court later finds it was warranted.
“Neither the Court nor the Parties should run an unnecessary risk of having to go through that process more than once,” they wrote.
Willis hired Wade in 2021 to lead the team to investigate and ultimately prosecute Trump and 18 others on charges that they illegally tried to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia in 2020. The case uses a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse the former president, lawyers and other aides of a “criminal enterprise” to keep him in power.
Willis and Wade testified at a hearing last month that they had engaged in a romantic relationship, but they rejected the idea that Willis improperly benefited from it, as lawyers for Trump and some of his co-defendants alleged. Willis and Wade insisted they didn’t begin dating until after he became special prosecutor and the relationship ended in the summer of 2023. They both said that Willis either paid for things herself or used cash to reimburse Wade for travel expenses.
McAfee wrote that there was insufficient evidence that Willis had a personal stake in the prosecution. And he said he was unable to “conclusively establish by a preponderance of the evidence” whether Willis and Wade began dating before or after he was hired as special prosecutor.
The judge wrote that there is still a lingering smell of dishonesty.
The judge also said that a speech given by Willis at a historic Black church in Atlanta, shortly after the allegations of her relationship with Wade came out, was not legally appropriate. In the speech, Willis complained that people had questioned her decision to hire Wade and his qualifications, seeming to imply that the criticism was based on their race.
The filing on Monday referred to the speech and argued that an appellate court would likely find it and McAfee's concerns enough to disqualify Willis.
