The decision by the Georgia Court of Appeals to grant President Trump’s request that it consider whether to disqualify the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, from her sprawling racketeering case over her romance with her married prosecutor is a significant setback for the polarizing attorney. 

By electing to hear arguments as to whether Ms. Willis should be disqualified, the appellate tribunal signals that her romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired, Nathan Wade, could be grounds for removal. Mr. Trump also contends that her extramural statements — say, accusing her critics of “playing the race card” —  amount to “forensic misconduct” and a second case for disqualification.

Mr. Trump will now have 10 days to file a formal “notice of appeal” asking the state riders to overrule Judge Scott McAfee’s finding that he and his co-defendants “failed to meet their burden” to show that Ms. Willis, who is running for reelection, should be removed from the case. Judge McAfee, though, did find a “significant appearance of impropriety” in the amorous affair between the prosecutors. The Fulton County code makes clear that an appearance of impropriety can be grounds for removal.    

The trial judge — who himself is running for reelection — also detected an “odor of mendacity” with respect to how Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade described their romance to the court. They allege that they only started dating after Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade, who this week told “Good Morning America” that workplace romances are “American as apple pie.” The district attorney’s office paid Mr. Wade more than $650,000 despite him never having prosecuted a felony case. 

Judge McAfee did not find what he called an “actual conflict of interest” in the arrangement between Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis, but the Court of Appeals could direct more scrutiny at, say, the trips the two took together to locales like Napa Valley, Aruba, and Belize while Mr. Wade was being paid by Ms. Willis’ office. The district attorney maintains she reimbursed her lover with cash she kept at home. Her father in court called that a “Black thing.”

Mr. Trump and his co-defendants argue that Ms. Willis’ behavior has “cast a pall over these entire proceedings” and that Judge McAfee’s decision to keep her on the trial is a “structural error that would not just cause substantial error at trial” but could be grounds for appeal if a verdict of “guilty” is brought in. Ms. Willis has struck a defiant note, insisting that “the train is coming” to convict Mr. Trump and the other 18 people she has charged.

The Sun corresponded with an attorney for one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, the lawyer John Eastman. He writes “Consider this: Would we tolerate it if, in any important, unprecedented and difficult prosecution, the district attorney hired his or her spouse, or child, to handle the case? Would we have confidence in the sagacity of the judgments being made?”   

The decision by the Court of Appeals, though, means that the train will be further delayed as Ms. Willis will once again be forced to defend her behavior. Judge McAfee decided that Mr. Wade’s resignation cured the conflict, but that remedy could now be judged insufficient. Just yesterday, in another one of Mr. Trump’s criminal cases, Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely delayed the 45th president’s Mar-a-Lago trial.

If Ms. Willis is disqualified, a law passed in 2022 mandates that  the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia pick a replacement. That could take months, and push a trial far beyond November’s presidential election. The executive director, Pete Skandalakis, tells NBC News that a district attorney “cannot refuse an appointment.”

In the event that the Georgia case is crippled by Ms. Willis’ disqualification, Special Counsel Jack Smith could consider whether to bring federal charges against some of her defendants who appear in his indictment as unindicted co-conspirators. These include the attorney Mr. Eastman, Mayor Giuliani and the lawyer Jeffrey Clark. Two more, the attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, have already pleaded guilty at Fulton County. Mr. Eastman and Mr. Giuliani were also recently indicted in Arizona. 

In a statement sent to the Sun, Mr. Trump’s attorney, Steven Sadow, shared that his client “looks forward to presenting interlocutory arguments to the Georgia Court of Appeals as to why the case should be dismissed and Fulton County DA Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct.”