On Monday, Fulton County prosecutors urged the Georgia Court of Appeals to not consider disqualifying Fani Willis from the Donald Trump RICO case.
Willis’ office told the Court of Appeals that “Because the applicants have wholly failed to carry their burden of persuasion, this Court should decline interlocutory review.”
Judge Scott McAfee initially ruled that Trump and his lawyers failed to prove that Willis benefited financially from a relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
However, he did allow Trump lawyers to appeal his initial ruling.
The appeal focuses on comments that Willis made during her MLK Day speech at historic Big Bethel AME Church. In his ruling, Judge McAfee said Willis’ remarks were “legally improper.”
“The Court also found that District Attorney Willis’ nationally publicized speech at Big Bethel AME Church on January 14, 2024 was ‘legally improper’ but declined to disqualify her on the basis of this forensic misconduct,” Trump’s defense team wrote.
On Monday, Willis’ team fired back by writing, “There is simply no trial court error to be found in the decision to deny disqualification. Days of evidence and testimony failed to disclose anything like a calculated pre-trial plan designed to prejudice the defendants or secure their convictions. The applicants have not identified any public statement injecting the District Attorney’s personal belief as to the defendants’ guilt or appealing to the public weighing of evidence.”
If the Court of Appeals decides to hear Trump’s attempt to disqualify Willis, it would only further delay the trial.
The entire two-month ordeal that focused on Willis and Wade’s relationship provided political entertainment, but it took away the attention from Trump and his co-defendant’s alleged crimes of attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
The RICO case centers around the 2020 election probe when Trump asked former Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a phone call to help him secure over 11,000 votes, the amount in which he trailed Joe Biden in Georgia.
During a recorded call that took place on Jan. 2, 2021, Trump told Raffensperger, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
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A.R. Shaw, Executive Editor
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