OAN Staff James Myers
9:47am – Thursday, December 19, 2024
The Georgia Court of Appeals has disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her entire office from the 2020 election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump.
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In a Thursday ruling, a three-judge panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals, Second Department, denied a request to throw out the entire case but removed Willis and his team, who led the prosecution of President Trump and the 18-year-old. The petition for the same was granted. Other co-defendants last year.
In a 12-page order, Judge Trenton Brown concluded that the charges against Willis had “the appearance of seriousness,” but that the lower court had “imposed inappropriate relief” on Trump. He said he and his eight co-defendants had “many reasons” to appeal. About fraud. ”
The ruling also says Willis hired her ex-girlfriend, Nathan Wade, as a special prosecutor, paid him to take her on lavish trips, and allowed her office to continue billing her for work on the Trump case. I also mentioned what I did.
“While we generally recognize that indicators of misconduct alone are not sufficient to support disqualification, this is a rare case in which disqualification is required and public confidence in the integrity of these procedures is significant. “No other remedy is sufficient to recover,” Brown and the other appellant said. legal scholars argued.
Mr. Wade will step down from his position in March after an Atlanta judge ruled that he could only continue overseeing the prosecution if Mr. Willis resigned.
Despite their claims at the time, witnesses have come forward saying the cautious couple's schedules did not align. On the same day that Wade was announced as special prosecutor in 2021, he separated from his wife of 26 years, raising concerns about when their romance would begin in earnest.
Wade is also accused of spending $654,000 he earned from his extortion work on lavish gifts and vacations with Willis, who was still his boss at the time. This raised eyebrows about how much Willis was supported financially by U.S. taxpayers and benefited financially from the individuals it hired.
The two traveled together to Miami and North Carolina, but Willis said he stopped paying for those vacations.
Mr. Trump and others charged in the 2020 Georgia election fraud case have similarly advanced a petition to have Mr. Willis removed from the case.
“In conferring overwhelming powers on President Trump, the American people demanded an immediate end to the political weaponization of the judicial system and an immediate reversal of all witch-hunts against President Trump. We look forward to uniting our country as we build greatness,” Steve Chan, President Trump's communications director, said in a statement after the verdict.
In November, Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped four 2020 election surveillance charges against Trump, and efforts to reinstate 40 Mar-a-Lago documents cases also ended.
Trump was charged with 10 charges in the Fulton County incident, but has pleaded not guilty.
But Trump hasn't completely put an end to the whole affair.
“We cannot conclude that this record supports the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the charges,” the court concluded in its decision.
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