The Georgia Supreme Court has rejected Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s attempt to challenge her disqualification in her election interference case against President Donald Trump and other defendants.
Justice Andrew Pinson led a concurring opinion on Sept. 16, stating that Willis’s appeal didn’t warrant further review by the state’s high court. Three justices joined a dissent.
“Even if one believes that the Court of Appeals erred in reaching [its] decision, granting review to answer that question would be mere error correction, and this Court generally does not exercise our certiorari jurisdiction merely to correct errors that do not have some broader impact on Georgia law,” he wrote.
The decision was the latest blow to the attempts before the 2024 election to prosecute Trump. His two criminal prosecutions in Florida and Washington were dismissed after he won in November. More recently, a New York appeals court ruled that the penalty in his civil fraud case was unconstitutional.
Although Trump was convicted and sentenced in his falsified business records case, he received no jail time and is currently awaiting the outcome of an appeal in federal court.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee had allowed Willis to remain on the case if one of her special prosecutors, Nathan Wade, left after revelations of an affair between the two. The Georgia Court of Appeals later found that McAfee erred by not disqualifying Willis.
“Willis’s misconduct during the investigation and prosecution of President Trump was egregious, and she deserved nothing less than disqualification,” Steve Sadow, an attorney for Trump, said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times.
“This proper decision should bring an end to the wrongful political, lawfare persecutions of the President.”
According to the state supreme court, one justice did not participate in the decision, while another was disqualified.
Georgia Supreme Court Justice Carla Wong McMillan said she would have taken up Willis’s appeal.
“The legal issue necessarily presented here – whether an attorney can be disqualified based on the appearance of impropriety alone – affects every single active lawyer in the State of Georgia, the Court of Appeals’s decisions are in conflict on this point, our Court’s precedent warrants reconsideration, and the issue is likely to recur,” she said in a statement joined by Justices John Ellington and Verda Colvin.
Willis said her office would make case materials available to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which can replace her with another prosecutor. The council’s executive director said he would begin looking for a replacement and that it’s up to that prosecutor how to handle the case.
Trump’s prosecution in Washington was withdrawn due to a Justice Department policy against criminal prosecution of a sitting president. A 2000 memo from the department states that “the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.”
It’s unclear whether those same concerns would prohibit a state prosecutor from pursuing charges against a sitting president.
Heritage Foundation Vice President John Malcolm previously told The Epoch Times that the supremacy clause of the Constitution prevents states from interfering with his federal duties and could interfere with a prosecution in Georgia. Even if the prosecution continues, legal experts have said it’s unlikely Trump would be sentenced to prison while he’s in office.
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