New victory on the judicial front for Donald Trump. A Georgia state appeals court on Thursday prohibited Fani Willis, district attorney for Fulton, a county that includes the city of Atlanta, from continuing to work on the election interference case opened against the president-elect for his efforts to overturn the result. legitimate of the 2020 elections in the southern State. Joe Biden won them, and thanks to that victory he secured the White House.
The court based its decision on the “appearance of improper conduct” that they attributed to a romantic relationship between Willis and one of the prosecutors in the case, Nathan Wade. The decision, which was made by two votes in favor and one against, contradicts that of the lower court judge who in March, and after an explosive trial that was broadcast live on cable television news networks, allowed Willis continue leading the case.
“We are facing one of those rare examples in which only disqualification [de la acusada] is sufficient to restore public confidence in the integrity of the process,” writes Justice Trenton Brown for the majority. This Thursday’s ruling represents in practice almost a condemnation of one of the four criminal proceedings that were opened in 2023 against the then Republican candidate, despite the fact that the court did not consider whether the case should continue or not. Now it is up to the state authorities to decide whether to look for a new representative of the Public Ministry or if they drop him.
Willis ran for the Democratic Party in the same election that Trump refused to admit he had lost. He assumed office on January 3, 2021, the day it was learned that the then US president had telephoned the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to ask him to find “1,780 votes”, one more than those that took him out of office. Biden advantage. Those ballots would have been enough to turn around the outcome of those presidential elections.
The new district attorney turned that call into one of her obsessions. His investigation ended up uncovering an alleged plot to impersonate official voters with Trump sympathizers, as well as evidence of harassment of officials, among other criminal conduct that led to the indictment of the Republican, as well as that of 18 of his collaborators, who face charges. 41 charges, but above all one: that of “organized crime.”
“Not guilty”
The 18 members of this allegedly mafia-like plot, a group that included famous Trump allies such as his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani or his last Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, pleaded not guilty at first. Later, four of them admitted their involvement in the events to reach a favorable agreement and avoid greater evils.
Willis hired Wade to assist her as special prosecutor in the investigation. In January 2024, the lawyers of Michael Roman, one of those investigated along with Trump, denounced the existence of a romantic link between Willis and Wade, and an apparent conflict of interest, because Willis had supposedly benefited from the signing of her boyfriend. . Until then, he had earned $650,000 (about 600,000 euros), money with which both had lived the great life: among other luxuries, vacations in the Bahamas, Aruba or the Californian valley of Napa.
The legal strategy in the four cases that, for the first time in history, a former president faced, has involved designing successful delay maneuvers. The first of them, related to an alleged black payment to a porn film actress to silence an extramarital relationship between the two, was the only one that was held. In a trial in Manhattan, Trump was found guilty by a jury of 34 serious crimes, but the judge has not yet handed down a sentence, nor is it clear that he will be able to do so before January 20, the day on which the convicted person will take possession for the second time.
In what was opened in a Florida court for the handling of confidential papers from his time in the White House that Trump took to his private residence at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, the accused and his lawyers had the help from Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by the Republican when he was president. It completely dismissed the case due to a formal defect in the appointment of special prosecutor Jack Smith, chosen by the Department of Justice. Smith, who was also investigating the Washington case, in which Trump’s attempts to reverse the 2020 election result and his involvement in the assault on the Capitol are being investigated, presented a motion on November 25 to withdraw the two accusations by dozens of crimes he maintained against the now elected president.
With Trump at the doors of the White House, after a victory, also, in the electoral vote, it seems clear that his problems with justice will soon be a thing of the past.
