Fani Willis disqualified from Trump case in stunning court ruling
The Fani Willis witch hunt against Donald Trump is finally over.
A Georgia appeals court disqualified Willis from prosecuting Trump on Thursday, effectively ending the long and winding legal saga over Willis' misconduct.
The ruling all but knocks out another Democratic prosecution of Trump, who has seen most of his legal troubles clear up after a stunning re-election victory.
Fani Willis disqualified
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Trump said the "corrupt" case was unjust from the beginning and should not continue under a different prosecutor.
"Everybody should receive an apology, including those wonderful patriots who have been caught up in this for years," he said.
Among Trump's four criminal prosecutions, Willis' was arguably the most ambitious and risky: Willis charged not only Trump, but more than a dozen allies, including lawyers, with overturning the 2020 election. It was Willis who had Trump's mugshot taken, a move widely seen as a mistake, as Trump turned the picture into an iconic image of defiance.
And it was Willis' prosecution that offered the first signs that the election-year lawfare campaign against Trump was in trouble.
After one of Trump's co-defendants accused Willis of benefiting from a relationship with an inexperienced lawyer whom she hired, she defended the affair in wild and unprofessional courtroom testimony.
The trial judge, Scott McAfee, fell short of disqualifying Willis as long as her lover, Nathan Wade, resigned from the Trump case, which he did.
Lawfare campaign unravels
The appeals court ruled Thursday that McAfee was wrong not to disqualify Willis, who now has "no authority to proceed."
While "an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification," the court said, "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."
"Accordingly, we reverse the trial court’s denial of the appellants’ motion to disqualify DA Willis and her office," the filing states. "As we conclude that the elected district attorney is wholly disqualified from this case, ‘the assistant district attorneys — whose only power to prosecute a case is derived from the constitutional authority of the district attorney who appointed them — have no authority to proceed."
The federal prosecutor hired by the Biden Justice Department to imprison Trump, Jack Smith, has dropped two separate cases against Trump in the wake of his re-election victory. This leaves Trump's sole criminal conviction from his "hush money" case in New York, where he was charged with falsifying business records in his dealings with Stormy Daniels.
The sentencing in the case is in limbo, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has floated pushing it back until 2029, when Trump's second term ends. As a practical matter, it's very unlikely Trump will face prison time.
The judge, Juan Merchan, rejected Trump's request to throw out the conviction this week on presidential immunity grounds.