The Georgia Court of Appeals has disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from her 2020 election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump.
In a shocking ruling on Thursday, the second division of the Peach State’s appellate court denied a request to throw out the case entirely but granted a motion to kick off Willis, who led the indictment against Trump, 78, and 18 co-defendants last year.
Judge Trenton Brown in the 12-page order said Trump and eight other co-defendants had “numerous grounds” to appeal the case after a lower court “imposed an improper remedy” despite concluding that Willis’ prosecution had a “significant appearance of impropriety.”
The ruling cites Willis’ decision to hire and extravagantly pay her now-ex-lover Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor, taking him on lavish trips and allowing him to excessively bill her office for his work on the Trump case.
“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety is generally 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,” Brown and the other appellate jurists contended.