The Georgia Court of Appeals’s decision to hold oral arguments on the disqualification of District Attorney Fani Willis on December 5 suggests that a collision could be coming between the Peach State and a possible second Trump White House.
That the session is scheduled amounts to a victory for Trump and his co-defendants, who requested the session. It is another setback for Ms. Willis, who sought to convince the review tribunal that Trump had not mustered up enough evidence to earn such a hearing. All three judges set to hear the case — Trenton Brown, Todd Markle, and Benjamin Land — are Republican appointees.
The timing of the hearing could be another boon to Trump. The Court of Appeals had set a tentative date of October 4 for the hearing, which would have meant that arguments would have been rehearsed a month before the election. The court has until March 2025 to render a decision. The appellate court has frozen all motions in the case during the pendency of this appeal.
The issue of whether Ms. Willis can continue to prosecute the sprawling racketeering case she brought against Trump and 18 others comes to the appeals court via a petition from the 45th president. The trial court judge, Scott McAfee, ruled that Ms. Willis could stay on if her former lover and special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, stepped aside, which he did with dispatch.
Judge McAfee found that Ms. Willis’s behavior, which he noted exuded a “significant appearance of impropriety,” was far from impeccable. He described her characterization of the affair as one that emitted an “odor of mendacity” and castigated her comments about her opponents “playing the race card” as “legally improper.”
Ms. Willis’s office paid Mr. Wade more than $650,000 for his services. He has never before prosecuted a felony case. During his employment at Fulton County, the two took trips to destinations like Napa Valley, Belize, and Aruba, all paid for by Mr. Wade. Ms. Willis claims that she reimbursed him in cash that she kept at home. Her father testified that practice was a “Black thing.”
Trump contends that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade, who maintain that they only began dating after Mr. Wade was hired, are lying. The 45th president has marshaled cellphone evidence that purports to show that the amorous duo exchanged thousands of calls and text messages before Mr. Wade was hired. He has since told ABC News that workplace romances are “as American as apple pie.”
The December 5 date throws into sharp relief the possibility that this case could lurch back into motion soon after its most prominent defendant wins the election — though before he is sworn into office as the 47th president on January 20. The order from the Court of Appeals gives no indication that its schedule is subject to revision in the event that Trump wins.
A sitting president has never faced state criminal charges. The Supreme Court ruled that President Clinton could be subject to federal civil suit, and Department of Justice regulations prohibit the prosecution of a president on federal criminal charges. Trump could still challenge the Georgia charges in light of the Supreme Court’s grant of immunity for official presidential acts, which could protect some of the behavior cited in Ms. Willis’s indictment.
Trump, should he return to the White House, could not fire Ms. Willis — or a possible replacement. His control over prosecutors would extend only over the federal kind. Similarly, he could possibly pardon himself for federal charges — “offenses against the United States” is how the Constitution puts it — but not for state ones. It is possible, though, that the Supreme Court could, in the name of protecting a functioning Executive, freeze the case until 2029.
On Wednesday Mr. Smith filed notice to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that he intends to appeal Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling that his appointment violated the Constitution because he was not confirmed by the Senate nor hired under an applicable law. Now, the special counsel’s chances of ever reaching a jury on the Mar-a-Lago charges depend on the riders at Atlanta.
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