Georgia will allow Trump to challenge order keeping Fani Willis on election interference case

The decision to hear the appeal is a significant win for Trump. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock

The Georgia state court of appeals on Wednesday said it would consider an appeal from Donald Trump of an order allowing Fani Willis, the district attorney, to continue prosecuting his election interference case in Fulton county.

In a one page order, the appeals court said it would allow Trump to challenge the decision not to disqualify Willis over her relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired to lead the Trump case. Scott McAfee, the trial judge overseeing the case, ruled in March that Willis could stay on the case as long as Wade resigned. Wade subsequently resigned the same day McAfee issued his decision.

Trump now has 10 days to file a notice of appeal, the court said. His legal team had asked the court of appeals to consider the case in March and clarify the standard for when a prosecutor should be disqualified.

“President Trump looks forward to presenting interlocutory arguments to the Georgia court of appeals as to why the case should be dismissed and Fulton county DA Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s attorney, said in a statement.

The decision to hear the appeal is a significant win for Trump. It decreases the chances that the case will go to trial before the November election and allows Trump and his lawyers to continue to undermine Willis’s credibility and keep questions about her judgment in the public eye. McAfee has already excoriated Willis for her conduct, saying she had a “tremendous lapse in judgment”.

Trump’s attorneys may petition the court to stay the trial pending the outcome of their appeal. Otherwise, the appeal will not immediately impede the prosecution as McAfee takes up pending motions. But if the appeals court decides that Willis must be removed, it would reset the years-long case back to square one while a new prosecutor can be appointed to oversee the case.

Last month, prosecutors urged the appeals court not to hear the appeal. “The present application merely reflects the applicants’ dissatisfaction with the trial court’s proper application of well-established law to the facts,” prosecutors wrote in a 19-page filing.

Trump and more than a dozen of his allies were charged last year with racketeering over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump and his co-defendants tried to dismiss the case by alleging that Willis’s relationship, and statements she made at a Black church in Atlanta suggesting criticism of her was racist, meant she should be recused from the case.

Wade defended his relationship with Willis in an interview with ABC News last weekend. “Workplace romances are as American as apple pie,” Wade said. “It happens to everyone. But it happened to the two of us.”

“I regret that that private matter became the focal point of this very important prosecution,” Wade added. “This is a very important case.”

The order comes one day after Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely delayed Trump’s trial in Florida for charges that he retained classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.