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Fani Willis dealt a major blow just as she was reigniting her fight with Trump

December 19, 2024 | | Print Article

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her entire office have been removed from the Georgia election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump.

“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” the Georgia Court of Appeals wrote in Thursday’s opinion.

The bad news is that the court declined on Thursday to dismiss the case itself.

“We cannot conclude that the record also supports the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the indictment,” the court ruled.

This means the case will continue for the time being, albeit under someone else’s tutelage.

“The new ruling means it will be up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find another prosecutor to take over the case and to decide whether to continue to pursue it, though that could be delayed if Willis decides to appeal to the state Supreme Court,” the Associated Press has confirmed.

That said, Trump supporters were thrilled over Willis being kicked off the case:

Trump has for months been trying to get Willis kicked off of the case over the affair she had with the special counselor/prosecutor she hired to handle the case.

Judge Benjamin Land, one of the three justices involved in Thursday’s ruling, dissented by arguing that the court was overstepping its authority by overturning a previous ruling from Judge Scott McAfee allowing Willis to continue with the case.

“It is not our job to second guess trial judges or to substitute our judgment for theirs,” Land wrote in his dissent. “We should resist the temptation to interfere with that discretion, including its chosen remedy, just because we happen to see things differently,” he continued. “Doing otherwise violates well-established precedent, threatens the discretion given to trial courts, and blurs the distinction between our respective courts.”

All this comes only days after Willis’ office filed a 14-page filing with the same court asking the justices to reject Trump’s request for her bogus election interference case against him to be tossed out.

Writing on behalf of Willis, Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney F. McDonald Wakeford argued that the president-elect’s attorneys had failed to prove that Georgia’s state-level case should be subjected to the Department of Justice’s rule barring the prosecution of a sitting president.

“Appellant does not specify or articulate how the appeal—or indeed, any other aspect of this case—will constitutionally impede or interfere with his duties once he assumes office,” he wrote.

Wakeford also argued that Trump is at the moment, only president-elect and not yet president.

“While the courts’ understanding of presidential immunity continues to evolve, ‘president-elect immunity’ obviously does not exist,” he wrote. “Article II places all the authority of the chief executive in the incumbent president, while a president-elect holds none.”

He further claimed Trump’s request wasn’t legally valid.

“The state’s filing characterized Trump’s legal arguments as ‘underbaked’ and accused his attorneys of making sweeping generalizations without substantive analysis,” according to Atlanta station WAGA. “Prosecutors argued that Trump’s notice to the court is procedurally improper and amounts to a ‘decree’ demanding dismissal of all charges without providing legal justification.”

Vivek Saxena
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