ATLANTA (AP) — An appeals court has put a hold on Georgia’s election interference case against former President Donald Trump and others while it reviews a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain in the case.
The order from the Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday prevented Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee from moving forward with the preliminary motions as he had planned while the appeal is pending. While it was already unlikely that the case would go to trial before the November general election, when Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee for president, this makes that even more certain.
The appeals court on Monday listed the appeals filed by Trump and eight others and said that “if oral arguments are requested and granted,” they are tentatively scheduled for Oct. 4. The court will then have until mid-March to rule, and the losing party will be able to appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia.
A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment on the appeals court ruling.
A grand jury in Fulton County indicted Trump and 18 others in August, accusing them of participating in an elaborate scheme to illegally attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. It is one of four criminal cases against Trump.
Trump and eight other defendants had sought to remove Willis and her office from the case, arguing that a romantic relationship she had with special counsel Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. McAfee found in March that there was no conflict of interest that should keep Willis from the case, but he granted a request by Trump and the other defendants to appeal his ruling to the state Court of Appeals.
McAfee wrote that “an odor of mendacity lingers.” He said “reasonable questions” about whether Willis and Wade had testified truthfully about the timing of their relationship “further support the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportionate efforts to remedy it.” He said Willis could only stay on the case if Wade left, and the special prosecutor submitted his resignation hours later.
The allegations that Willis had wrongfully profited from her romance with Wade resulted in a tumultuous few months in the case, as intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal life were aired in court in mid-February.
