Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can no longer oversee the prosecution of President Donald Trump in the 2020 election interference case, according to a decision issued Tuesday by the state’s highest court.
The order casts doubt on the future of the last remaining criminal prosecution of Trump. A nonpartisan state agency will now try to find another prosecutor to determine how to proceed with the sweeping racketeering case against Trump and his allies.
In a 4-3 order, the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear the Fulton DA’s appeal of a lower court’s decision in December that said Willis must be disqualified from the case because of her romantic relationship with then-special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Andrew Pinson suggested the DA’s office erred in the way it appealed.
“The root of the problem is the State’s approach to litigating this issue on appeal,” Pinson wrote, stating that Willis failed to make her request broad enough. Because of that, the appeals court’s decision was not an appropriate one for the Supreme Court to review, he said.
“It seems more likely to me that the circumstances of this case are unique,” Pinson added.
The decision, barring Willis from prosecuting the case, is a crushing blow to the nationally known prosecutor and is certain to tarnish her reputation for years to come.
The DA suggested she would let the opinion stand and not ask the Supreme Court to reconsider.
“While I disagree with the decision of the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Georgia Supreme Court’s divided decision not to review it, I respect the legal process and the courts,” the Democrat said in an emailed statement.
Jurisdiction over the Trump case is now expected to be handed over to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which steps in when a prosecutor is removed or local DAs determine, for ethical reasons, they cannot pursue a case. PAC’s executive director, Pete Skandalakis, previously said if his organization was given the case he would try to find a conflict prosecutor.
Skandalakis said Tuesday morning he was still reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision. He said the case has yet to formally arrive at his office and that he would soon be meeting with his senior staff to determine next steps.
Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team took a victory lap.
“Willis’ misconduct during the investigation and prosecution of President Trump was egregious and she deserved nothing less than disqualification,” said Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead Georgia attorney. “This proper decision should bring an end to the wrongful political, lawfare persecutions of the President.”
The indictment, handed up Aug. 14, 2023, alleges Trump and his supporters engaged in a criminal enterprise in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. The defendants were charged with participating in a racketeering conspiracy and other crimes.
If a new prosecutor is found and decides to move forward with the case, it is widely believed across legal circles that any trial involving Trump would not occur until after his presidential term ends in January 2029. But that would not prevent the new prosecutor from trying other defendants, such as former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former state GOP chair David Shafer and state Sen. Shawn Still.
There is also the possibility a new prosecutor would decide to drop the case against all or some of the remaining 15 defendants. (Four defendants, including lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, previously entered guilty pleas.)
Willis said Tuesday she planned to make the case file and evidence available to the Attorneys’ Council.
“I hope that whoever is assigned to handle the case will have the courage to do what the evidence and the law demand,” she said.
The challenge to remove Willis from the case began in January 2024 in a court filing on behalf of defendant Michael Roman, who worked for the Trump 2020 campaign as director of election day operations.
After presiding over a extraordinary, multi-day evidentiary hearing, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that while Willis had a “tremendous lapse in judgment,” the defense failed to prove the DA had an actual conflict of interest. Still, the judge said that Willis could only stay on the election case if Wade stepped aside, which the Marietta attorney did that same day.
In his ruling, McAfee said he was “unmoored from precedent” because he could find few appellate decisions to help him determine when a sitting DA should be disqualified from prosecuting a case.
In issuing its ruling overturning McAfee, the Court of Appeals majority provided scant guidance for judges overseeing disqualification challenges in future cases.
The majority opinion said that while “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.”
With its decision not to hear the Fulton DA’s appeal, the Georgia Supreme Court is letting the Court of Appeals’ majority opinion stand.
In a dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Carla Wong McMillian said the appeals court expanded case law and that its decision was worthy of the high court’s review.
“In short, this case requires the resolution of a novel issue of gravity about which the state of the law is confused and conflicted— both in Georgia and across the country—and thus warrants consideration (or reconsideration) by this Court," she wrote.
McMillian cautioned about criminal defendants potentially misusing the appeals court’s ruling to try and disqualify prosecutors based on a legally amorphous standard of appearance of a conflict of interest.
But Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney for Roman who first disclosed Willis’s relationship with Wade, applauded Tuesday’s decision.
“The lapses in judgment and the inability to accept responsibility for those lapses has infected this case from its inception,” she said. “We hope this will finally close this chapter.”
This will not be the Supreme Court’s last opportunity to weigh in on Willis. On Nov. 4, the justices will hear oral argument on a related subpoena fight between the DA and a state Senate committee that’s been investigating her.
The Georgia prosecution was the last criminal case standing against Trump. The U.S. Department of Justice dismissed the two pending federal cases against him after he was reelected.
Trump was convicted in New York of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal his affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. But 10 days before he was sworn in again as president, a New York judge sentenced him to an unconditional discharge, sparing him from any penalty such as prison time, home confinement or a fine.
After Tuesday’s ruling, prominent allies of the president resumed calls for Willis to be punished.
Josh McKoon, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, urged a broader “reckoning” against the DA.
“I am calling on the United States Attorney, the Attorney General of Georgia and the State Bar of Georgia to open investigations into the misconduct that led to her disqualification,” he said. “This can never be allowed to happen again in our State.”
Staff writer Rosie Manins contributed to this article.
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