Trump urges Georgia Supreme Court to keep DA Fani Willis disqualified from election interference case

(ATLANTA) — President-elect Donald Trump, in a court filing Friday, urged the Georgia Supreme Court to keep Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis disqualified from the criminal election interference case against him.

The filing from Trump’s attorneys, just days before Trump’s inauguration, asked the court to uphold the appeals court ruling last month that disqualified Willis over her relationship with a prosecutor on the case.

Willis asked the Georgia Supreme Court earlier this month to reverse her disqualification.

Trump’s lawyers argued in Friday’s filing that the trial court fashioned an “inadequate legal remedy” by allowing Willis to remain on the case if the prosecutor Nathan Wade resigned, which he did following the ruling.

Trump and 18 others pleaded not guilty in 2023 to all charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia, and four defendants subsequently took plea deals in exchange for agreeing to testify against other defendants.

Willis was disqualified from the case last month — although the indictment was allowed to stand — when the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld Trump’s appeal of the trial judge’s ruling that allowed Willis to stay on the case.

Friday’s filing also pushed back on Willis’ claim that the appeals court created a new standard when it disqualified her, claiming: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“Mandatory disqualification of an elected District Attorney for a significant appearance of impropriety, for specific conduct, is unlikely to recur because no Georgia District Attorney has engaged in such egregious disqualifying conduct before and it is highly unlikely that any DA will ever do so in the future,” the filing stated. “No Georgia court has ever considered impropriety of this extraordinary magnitude.”

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