President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday falsely claimed that a Georgia appeals court’s decision to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from his 2020 election interference case in the state signals that the lawsuit is “entirely dead.”
In an interview with Fox News Digital, the president-elect described the case centred on Trump and some of his allies’ efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race in Georgia as politically motivated, adding that there is no way for the case to move forward despite the appeals court’s refusal to dismiss it.
“There is no way such corrupt people can lead a case, and then it gets taken over by somebody else,” Trump told the network. “It was a corrupt case, so how could it be taken over by someone else?”
“Therefore,” Trump argued, “the case is entirely dead.”
“Everybody should receive an apology, including those wonderful patriots who have been caught up in this for years,” he added.
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, echoed his client, noting that “the decision puts an end to a politically motivated persecution of the next President of the United States.”
In a 2-1 decision released on Thursday, the Georgia appeals court overturned trial court Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling that had allowed Willis to remain on after she was accused of having a conflict of interest stemming from a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor on the case, as long as Wade resigned. Wade stepped down following the judge’s ultimatum.
But the court said the ruling didn’t go far enough.
“Disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” Judge Brenton Brown wrote for the majority.
The three-judge panel, however, ruled that the case should still proceed, noting that the appellants, including Trump, failed to show that their “due process rights have been violated or that the issues involved prejudiced [them] in any way.”
“While this is the rare case in which DA Willis and her office must be disqualified due to a significant appearance of impropriety, we cannot conclude that the record also supports the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the indictment under the appropriate standard,” Brown wrote.
Willis has yet to publicly comment on her removal from the case. Her office, however, has signalled it plans to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.
If the appeals court’s decision stands, a state agency would be in charge of naming a new prosecutor unaffiliated with Fulton County to take over the case, The Washington Post said.
The Georgia case is the last remaining criminal case against the president-elect.
Following Trump’s victory in the 2024 race, special counsel Jack Smith moved to drop Trump’s cases involving his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to undo President Joe Biden’s win in 2020. A sentencing hearing in his New York hush money case has also been postponed indefinitely.
