Appeals court won’t hear arguments on Fani Willis’ role in Georgia Trump case until after election

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia appeals court has set a December hearing for arguments on the appeal of a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue to prosecute the election interference case she brought against former President Donald Trump.

Trump and other defendants had asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to hold oral arguments in the case, and the court on Tuesday set those arguments for Dec. 5. That timing means the lower court proceedings against Trump, which are on hold while the appeal is pending, will not resume before the November general election, when Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.

The appeal is to be decided by a three-judge panel of the intermediate appeals court, which will then have until mid-March to rule. The judges assigned to the case are Trenton Brown, Todd Markle and Benjamin Land. Once the panel rules, the losing side could ask the Georgia Supreme Court to consider an appeal.

A Fulton County grand jury last August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.

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The case is one of four criminal cases brought against Trump, which have all seen favorable developments for the former president recently.

A federal judge in Florida on Monday dismissed a case having to do with Trump’s handling of classified documents, a ruling Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith has vowed to appeal. Trump was convicted in May in his New York hush money trial, but the judge postponed sentencing after a Supreme Court ruling said former presidents have broad immunity. That opinion will cause major delays in a separate federal case in Washington charging Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump and eight other defendants are trying to get Willis and her office removed from the case and to have the case dismissed. They argue that a romantic relationship Willis had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the Court of Appeals.

McAfee wrote that “reasonable questions” over whether Willis and Wade had testified truthfully about the timing of their relationship “further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.” He allowed Willis to remain on the case only if Wade left, and the special prosecutor submitted his resignation hours later.

The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade resulted in a tumultuous couple of months in the case as intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February.