Fani Willis Is Permanently Barred From Her Prosecution of Trump Due to Secret Romance, but Could a New Prosecutor Revive the Case?

The refusal of the Georgia supreme court to reconsider the disqualification of the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, leaves her racketeering case against President Trump and his retinue in ruins — but not yet entirely banished to oblivion. The denial of certiorari to Ms. Willis’s appeal of her suspension from the election interference case she brought against Mr. Trump and 18 others is a decisive victory for the 47th president. The high court’s four-to-three decision ends Ms. Willis’s time atop the case, which was terminated because of her secret romance with her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade.Mr. Trump’s attorney, Steven Sadow, declares in a statement that the Georgia supreme court’s “proper decision should bring an end to the wrongful political, lawfare persecutions of the President.” The case, though, is not yet dead. The Georgia court of appeals, which handed down the ruling disqualifying Ms. Willis, demurred from dismissing the charges she filed, reasoning that such an intervention would be “extreme.”The court of appeals did rule that “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.” Ms. Willis’s decision to appoint Mr. Wade, whom evidence presented in court strongly suggests she was dating before his hire, was a fatal move. The appellate court appeared to determine that the two lied about when their relationship began. The resignation of Mr. Wade — compelled by a lower court — was not enough to cure the “significant appearance of impropriety” generated by their affair, which included her office compensating him some $700,000 and the two vacationing together to destinations such as Bermuda, Napa Valley, and Belize. Now both Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis are off the case, even as their personal bond appears undamaged. The two testified that their romantic relationship has ended, but they have been spotted together at an LAX departures terminal and during the roadside arrest of Ms. Willis’s daughter for a traffic violation. Mr. Wade has said that workplace romances are “as American as apple pie.”Georgia law mandates that when a prosecutor is removed from a case, the file is passed on to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a body established in 1975. The council consists of nine members — six district attorneys and three state court solicitors. The council’s executive director, Pete Skandalakis, a Republican, served for years as a district attorney in Georgia. He said in a statement on Tuesday that he will get to work appointing a new prosecutor, and it will then be “up to him or her what to do with the case.”Ms. Willis, in a statement after the high court’s ruling came down, declared that “my office will make the case file and evidence available to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for use in the ongoing litigation. I hope that whoever is assigned to handle the case will have the courage to do what the evidence and the law demand.” Mr. Trump, triumphant, cited Ms. Willis’s and Mr. Wade’s “torrid ‘love’ affair” as the reason for her disqualification.Whoever Mr. Skandalakis chooses as prosecutor will possess the discretion to push forward with the case, drop it entirely, or edit it. One possibility is that the case continues against all of the remaining defendants — 14 — save Mr. Trump. While a sitting president has never been charged with a state crime, the Department of Justice has held that presidents possess “categorical” immunity from prosecution during their tenure in office.Any prosecution of Mr. Trump would also have to contend with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States that official presidential acts are presumptively immune from prosecution, while unofficial acts lack that protection. The acts at the core of Ms. Willis’s case, which date to the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, all occurred while Mr. Trump was president. Any attempt to prosecute Mr. Trump would be required to show that he can be convicted on the basis of unofficial acts.A new prosecutor could conclude that the alleged effort to overturn the result of the 2020 election in Georgia warrants continuing the case, but also that Ms. Willis erred in structuring it as a complex racketeering prosecution. Harvey Silverglate, an attorney for one of the defendants, John Eastman, speculates to the Sun that Ms. Willis might have chosen the racketeering route as a means of racking up billable hours for Mr. Wade. Ms. Willis, though, has been an enthusiastic prosecutor of racketeering cases in other contexts, most notably the prosecution of a number of Atlanta school teachers for cheating and the case against the rapper Young Thug and his Young Stoner Life record label, which Ms. Willis alleged was a criminal gang. That case, the longest in Georgia’s history, ended in collapse with no murder convictions. A new prosecutor in this case could opt for a simpler slate of conspiracy charges against some or all of Ms. Willis’s defendants.

Fani Willis Is Permanently Barred From Her Prosecution of Trump Due to Secret Romance, but Could a New Prosecutor Revive the Case?

Fani Willis Is Permanently Barred From Her Prosecution of Trump Due to Secret Romance, but Could a New Prosecutor Revive the Case?

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