An appeals court in the US state of Georgia disqualified the district attorney prosecuting Donald Trump for election interference on Thursday, but rejected the president-elect’s bid to throw the case out.
The Georgia Court of Appeals removed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the case citing the “impropriety” of an intimate relationship she had with the man she hired to be a special prosecutor.
The trial judge had ruled earlier this year that Willis could remain on the case but the appeals court disagreed.
“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” the three-judge appeals court panel said.
“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” they said.
Trump was charged with racketeering in Georgia over his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election in the southern state.
The case has been stalled for months, however, and was likely to be frozen under the Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Willis can appeal her disqualification to the Georgia Supreme Court.
While removing Willis, the appeals court panel rejected a motion by Trump and his remaining co-defendants to have the entire indictment dismissed.
“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,” they said.
The Georgia case is the only remaining criminal prosecution facing Trump as he prepares to return to the White House.
Trump’s attorney Steven Sadow has argued that the case should be dismissed now that he is the president-elect.
A sitting president is “completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal,” Sadow said, and the continued prosecution of Trump in Georgia would be unconstitutional.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has dropped the two federal cases against Trump citing the policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president.
Trump was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election and of removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House, but neither case came to trial.
Trump was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
The judge in that case on Monday rejected a bid by Trump to have his conviction thrown out on the grounds that a former president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
cl/des
